Back to the Beginning
by nofurylikewiccansscorned
Summary: Their road won't be easy, but a rising sun awaits their journey's end. The day of reckoning is both far off and very near, but they can't afford to be afraid. And who knows: maybe starting a new journey isn't so hard. Or maybe it has already begun.
1. Searching

Disclaimer: Howdy, fellow Sweep fans. This is just one of the two  
members of this account writing this, but the other has been very  
helpful in coming up with the plot of the story. This chapter is  
mostly just to set up what will happen in future parts, so bear with  
the boredom, please ;). I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what you  
think about the story, so please, please review!!!  
  
Summary: Morgan, Raven, Bree, and Robbie tag along when Hunter and Sky  
are summoned to England by Uncle Beck and Aunt Shelagh.  
  
PART I: Searching  
  
~*MORGAN'S POV*~  
  
"We don't have to do this, you know," my boyfriend Hunter said to his cousin Sky while attempting to load bulky bags and backpacks into the back of my huge submarine of a car, Das Boot. Sky just gave him her patented icy glare with which she has crippled millions.  
  
"Hunter, if I was going to back out, I would have done it sometime when we weren't already half an hour late for our plane."  
  
"You guys have been sniping at each other for the last two hours," Bree commented casually, swaying her dark, mink-brown hair over her shoulder as she swung her backpack off and into the trunk. "If you're going to be doing that for the whole trip, let me know in advance so that I can shoot myself."  
  
I grinned at her as I shoved one of my two suitcases into Das Boot's trunk on top of Robbie's bright yellow duffel bag. Seeing Hunter and Sky reduced to squabbling kids at the prospect of going back to England was certainly a sight to see. Raven and I had been trying to calm down our respective significant others for about three days with no success whatsoever.  
  
You might be confused. I wouldn't be surprised if you were. The cliff-notes version of the tale is that we're all going to England. If you want a more detailed version than that, observe the following ...  
  
~*THREE DAYS EARLIER*~  
  
"Are you sure? ... No, I'm not, I know it's important ... I'm not sure that Sky would agree to that ... Um, yes? Of course she would come ... Well, maybe ... I'll see what she thinks ... No ... Yes, I want to see them again, but, once again, I can't be sure that Sky does ... Well, they don't exactly get along ... It's a long story ... Kennet, this is off-topic ... Fine. Fine. I'll call the airport and see when I can catch a flight."  
  
That was when my head snapped up from where I was sitting at Hunter's kitchen table immersed in one of Sky's world-renowned blueberry pies. Airport? Hunter? Flight? Could those words be used in the same sentence and still make sense? Considering the fragmentation of the previous phone conversation, I hadn't really been paying attention until those words penetrated my brain.  
  
"Are youf cathing a fwight?" I asked quickly, my still-full-of-blueberry- goodness mouth accidentally spraying the table with crust bits. "To whfere?"  
  
"England," Hunter said curtly, hanging up the phone from his conversation with Kennet and picking it up again to dial what I assumed was the Red Kill Airport. "London, more specifically."  
  
"Whath? Why?"  
  
"Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's coven is being harassed by dark magick. It's not that big of a deal. Do you want some more pie?"  
  
"Hunter!"  
  
He sighed. "That was Kennet Muir. Someone has been sending negative magick against my aunt and uncle's coven, and he wants me to find out who's doing it and stop them, all right?  
  
I narrowed my eyes. "But ... they're in England."  
  
"Yes. So, logically speaking, I'll have to go to England to help them."  
  
"With Sky?"  
  
"She'll be sour at me for about six months following, but yes."  
  
"Can I come?"  
  
"Although she really should take the initiative to speak with her parents again after so many –" He did a double take. "WHAT?"  
  
"Well, it's summer vacation. School doesn't start again for a few months, for any of us. Other than rotting my central nervous system with hours upon hours of watching Cartoon Network, I don't have any plans." Following that very convincing speech, I pouted, knowing full well that he couldn't resist me when I pouted (wink). "Please?"  
  
Hunter looked conflicted and didn't say anything.  
  
"Please?"  
  
Nothing.  
  
"Please?" Double pouts.  
  
Finally.  
  
"All right," he said hesitantly. I was all set to jump up and down with joy when he held up a hand. "But – only if your parents agree."  
  
I pouted again, only this time for real as I realized with a crashing shatter (that was actually the plate that used to hold my blueberry pie smashing on the ground) that my parents had been reluctant to let me go to New York with Hunter and my friends over a long weekend. England was clear across an ocean. I hadn't thought of this.  
  
Huh. This definitely constituted a problem.  
  
"I'll work on it," I said thoughtfully, already planning my parents' downfalls.  
  
~*TWO DAYS EARLIER*~  
  
"Please, Mom?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Please, Dad?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Mom –"  
  
"Morgan, if I said no five seconds ago, what makes you think that I'll say yes now?"  
  
I began to pout again. Unfortunately, this doesn't have the same effect on my parents that it has on Hunter.  
  
"Mom, this means a lot to me. We're not going on any trips or anything this summer, so why can't I go? Besides, it's not as if Hunter and I will be alone for the entire trip. Sky is going, too. Which means that, by default, Raven is, also."  
  
She was weakening; I could tell. The idea of a group trip was clearly more favorable than the idea of a Hunter-and-I-alone trip.  
  
"And," I pressed, "I could call Bree and see if she and Robbie wanted to come, too. Hunter said that the council would pay for everyone's plane tickets if he did a little persuading, and it would be so much more fun with everyone else there, too."  
  
As long as I got Hunter all to myself at night, that was.  
  
Bad thoughts, Morgan. Don't go there.  
  
Meanwhile, Mom was weakening further. I just needed one extra edge that would make her say yes.  
  
"It'll be educational ..." I pressed.  
  
Bam. I had her. My parents could never refuse an opportunity for education.  
  
"Well ... only if Bree and Robbie go, as well," Mom said reluctantly. Dad nodded his agreement, already too immersed in the business section of the newspaper to be paying attention.  
  
"Yes!!! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!" I threw my arms around my mother in the biggest bear hug that I've ever given anyone in my entire life before reeling away with a gasp. "I have to pack!"  
  
With that, I rushed upstairs, only coming back down the stairs once that night, still squealing, "I love you guys!"  
  
~*PRESENT-DAY*~  
  
I was so excited that night. I still am. But ...  
  
This would be fun. I would get to meet my boyfriend and soulmate's guardians and hope that they like me. Bree said that they'll love me, but Bree doesn't know how nervous I am because Robbie's parents are always too drunk to meet any of his girlfriends (even though it's not like he's had any before Bree, but moving on). It's my heritage about which I'm worried. I doubt that Shelagh and Beck Eventide, two pureblood Wydenkell witches, will want their nephew running around with a Woodbane witch. I know that the stereotypes associated with Woodbanes declaring them evil and power- hungry have long since been proven false, but I'm still allowed to worry, right?  
  
... Bree is right. I think too much.  
  
~*HUNTER'S POV*~  
  
I really don't want to go to England. I know that it's my birthplace and I lived there for, oh, I don't know, my entire life, but ... Widow's Vale has become home to me. I think that Sky feels the same way. Moreover, seeing Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck wasn't something that I had wanted to do for a *very* long time.  
  
Not that I'm ungrateful, because I really do appreciative of what they did for Linden, Alwyn, and I when Ma and Da left us in their care. It's just that ... well, they're not my two favorite people in the world. Sure, I get along fine with Uncle Beck, but Aunt Shelagh is, to put it nicely, excessively stubborn. I've talked with Uncle Beck almost once a week since coming to New York, but I haven't heard from Aunt Shelagh at all. I've been on bad terms with her for a while. See, there are a few witches and covens, mainly in England, ironically, that disapprove of how the council manages its affairs with abusers of magick and major violations of the Wiccan Rede. Unfortunately for my career and I, Shelagh is one of those people. She fainted when I told her and Uncle Beck that I was joining the council.  
  
She fainted. She actually fainted.  
  
She wasn't too pleased with Sky, either. I think we're both horrible embarrassments to her. My cousin the brainiac got accepted into one of the most prestigious colleges in Dublin and Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck were delighted; they wanted her to go so badly, but, against my violent protests, she chose to come to New York with me instead of going to Ireland. I don't think Shelagh has ever forgiven her for that. Sky said that Aunt Shelagh has probably been telling everyone in her coven, Briongloid Radharc, that we both died of terminal cancer.  
  
Now that I think about it, she's probably right.  
  
~*AIRPORT TERMINAL*~  
  
Raven Meltzer looked at the clock on the opposite wall for a moment before sighing in frustration. "How long have we been sitting here?"  
  
"About two hours, give or take twenty minutes," Morgan Rowlands answered, her voice laced with immense boredom. "Of all the days for the plane to be late ..."  
  
Bree Warren let out a whistle. "Damn. I'm about to go stir-crazy."  
  
As if on cue, the flight attendant's cool and calm voice sounded over the announcement system. "All passengers for British Airways to London, please form a single-file line with your tickets to board the plane."  
  
After a slight confusion during which Hunter Niall was bombarded with requests for personal tickets and bags were gathered up from the hard seats and floor, Morgan plopped down in seat F5 between Bree and her boyfriend, practically bouncing up and down in excitement.  
  
"So how long is this flight going to be?"  
  
"Six hours. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten."  
  
"Thank you, Hunter."  
  
"You're welcome."  
  
"You guys are weird," Bree said, slipping her headphones over her ears and plugging them into her MP3 player.  
  
"We're well aware," Morgan grinned. "Believe me."  
  
Approximately three hours later, the plane's cabin was dark with the night that had fallen outside over the Atlantic Ocean. Only a few passengers, plus one of the stewardesses who was chatting animatedly to a copilot, had lights on. Morgan looked up from her copy of the latest edition of Scientific American to see that all of her fellow covenmates were asleep; Hunter was snoring lightly with his seat leaning back, Bree's headphones were lying haphazardly around her neck, her head resting on Robbie's shoulder, and Raven and Sky were wrapped up together in a blanket.  
  
The Woodbane princess smiled to herself. This would prove to be an interesting trip.  
  
"What was that thing that Hunter told me once ..."  
  
[ ...An áit a bhfuil do chroí is ann a thabharfas do chosa thú ... ]  
  
[ ... Your feet will bring you to where your heart is ... ] 


	2. This Place Called Home

Disclaimer: Hey again, guys. You know the drill. Review, review,  
review, and we'll love you lots!!!  
  
Summary: The gang arrives at Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's cottage and  
receives an ultimatum about the cruel dark magick abuser.  
  
PART II: This Place Called Home  
  
~*MORGAN'S POV*~  
  
We had been sitting in the airport rental car for about twenty minutes without moving. Hunter had turned the engine off, the heat had disappeared, and I was pretty sure that my butt was frozen to the leather seat. Why were we sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere without any heat on when England was pretty damn cold that day? I didn't know. Some childhood issues that Hunter and Sky had with their parents/guardians were no doubt the reasons.  
  
"I can't feel my ass," Bree commented off-handedly, giving voice to what I had been thinking about two milliseconds earlier. Hunter gave her a dirty glare before returning his gaze to the road in front of us with his eyes unfocused lazily. Sky was doing the same thing, except she was actually looking at something in the distance.  
  
"Remember the old willow tree, Hunter?" she asked with a slight laugh, her eyes not agreeing with her forced chuckle.  
  
"Like I could ever forget it," he murmured without refocusing his eyes.  
  
"I think we should get out," Robbie offered. "They've probably already seen us sitting out here."  
  
He had a point. We had been sitting outside Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's quaint, two-level brick cottage on the farthest outskirts of London for almost half an hour. Chances were, they had glanced out and seen us sitting here like idiots.  
  
"Hunter, this trip isn't about your relationship with them," I said carefully, trying to phrase my words perfectly so as not to inadvertently cause psychological harm to my boyfriend. "This trip is about stopping the abuse of magick. It's just like any other case that you've worked on."  
  
"No, it's not," Hunter muttered quietly. "It's so much more different ..."  
  
No one spoke for a moment. I think we were all afraid to. Finally, Hunter gave an odd sigh, opened his car door, climbed outside, and slammed the door shut after him. Sky, following suit, opened the back door for Raven, Robbie, Bree, and I, considering that we were too squished in with all of our suitcases and bags to move our hands to open the doors by ourselves. Or move at all. Or practically breathe.  
  
Shelagh and Beck Eventide's cabin looked like something out of a fairy tale. A weird fairy tale. Although picturesque and verging on adorable, even its styled brick walls, apple-tree-lined cobblestone paths, and tiny patio near the front door with wicker loveseats, tables, and chairs, could not hide the fact that all of the plants surrounding the house and in a fifty-foot vicinity were dead.  
  
Yep. Dead.  
  
The flowers and trees that lined the paths were all brown, withered, dead, and fragile to the touch. The grass, while well trimmed and obviously previously well kept, was brown and looked as if it would utter a loud CRUNCH when trodden upon. A large window to the right of the front doors of the cottage looked bare, considering that the edelweiss planter attached to it held nothing but shriveled-up flowers. The apple trees' leaves were gone and the branches looked naked and lifeless; dead apples lined the pathways where they had clearly fallen from the trees. As we carefully walked up the path leading to the doors, all being careful not to step in rotten apple, it occurred to me that all of these dead plants must have been victims of whatever dark magick was sent against Briongloid Radharc.  
  
"This is worse than I thought," Hunter said quietly to Sky, who looked at him with concern in her eyes.  
  
"Yes, but it doesn't appear that much else has changed," she stated unhelpfully. As if to prove her point, she suddenly leapt back with a scream as she nearly stepped on what was, upon closer inspection, the body of a dead chipmunk.  
  
"Gross," Bree said in disgust, covering her nose against the stench that the dead carcass was giving off.  
  
Sky, who was cowering from the sight behind Raven, pointed at the chipmunk with a shaky hand. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?"  
  
"It appears to be a dead chipmunk," Robbie said calmly, stating the obvious.  
  
"You don't say?" Sky asked sarcastically as she sidestepped the rodent with a look of pure revulsion.  
  
When she had calmed down and as the six of us stood in front of the cabin's double hardwood doors, I noticed that Hunter looked a lot paler than he normally does; actually, both he and Sky were practically hyperventilating with nervousness. I gave Hunter's hand a quick squeeze and he smiled at me, grateful for the small gesture of comfort. He reached out and knocked three times solidly on the door, considering that there wasn't a doorbell.  
  
"I can't do this," Sky whispered softly, sounding painfully nervous, her voice shaking slightly.  
  
"Yes, you can," I heard Raven say soothingly to her.  
  
"Just a moment," I heard a man's voice call from inside the house. Hunter gripped my hand so tightly that I had to pull it away with a gasp of pain.  
  
"Uncle Beck ..."  
  
I could see a person vaguely through the decorative leaded glass set into the door and, a second later, the door swung open to reveal who I could only assume was Hunter's Uncle Beck. He was a tall man of average build, slightly balding but still with very dark black hair. His face, uniquely marked by bushy black eyebrows and a prominent nose, split into a wide grin when he saw Hunter and Sky.  
  
"Giomanach! Athar!"  
  
Within seconds, Hunter was pulled away from my side as Uncle Beck gave him a crushing hug that I'm sure would break the bones of a smaller person than him.  
  
"It's great to see you, Uncle Beck," Hunter said, grinning madly now, quite a change from his behavior five seconds prior. "Goddess, you have no idea how great it is." He was released by Uncle Beck only to be immediately replaced by Sky, who rushed into her father's arms with a swish of blonde hair and a happy squeal.  
  
"Hey, Da!"  
  
"Hi, princess." He held her at arm's length and examined her. "When did you shoot up another five inches?"  
  
We all rolled our eyes at the typically fatherly expression as Sky just laughed and hugged him again.  
  
"Come in, please, come in," Uncle Beck said warmly to the rest of us, who were hanging back by the door awkwardly. As we stepped into the foyer of the cottage, I was struck by how I had expected exactly this to be a real witch's home. The only real one that I had ever been inside was Selene's.  
  
This house was much more different than Selene and Cal's, though. The fragrant smells of rosemary, sandalwood, and jasmine incense hung in the air, as did the intoxicatingly wonderful scents of candles and votives. The walls of the foyer were covered in framed photos of Uncle Beck, a woman in her mid-forties with shoulder-length red hair that I assumed was Hunter's Aunt Shelagh, a few recent pictures of Hunter, Sky, and girls that I assumed must be Sky's sisters, and a few older frames, one of which instantly caught my eye against the pinstriped red and black wallpaper. A young Hunter (easily distinguishable because his face had hardly changed at all) was pushing a young Sky, probably six or seven, on a swing set. Young Sky's long blonde hair flew out behind her as she laughed, and I was struck with a sudden sadness for the both of them. They had been through so much together, and seeing them acting so young and innocently, even if in just a picture, was a little strange.  
  
I was jolted out of my reflections by a voice calling, "Beck? Whom are you talking to?"  
  
Hunter and Sky both froze simultaneously and exchanged identical looks of horror as the woman I recognized from the pictures as Shelagh Eventide appeared behind Uncle Beck. When she saw the six of Kithic's members standing there with her husband, she stopped in her tracks and stared at Hunter and Sky.  
  
"Hello, Ma." Sky's voice was barely above a whisper.  
  
Shelagh, stuttering a bit, seemed to be searching for something to say that wouldn't make her sound like she was disgusted to see the two of them.  
  
"Hello, Athar," she said finally, a tight smile on her lips that did not reach her eyes. "Hello, Giomanach."  
  
"Hello, Aunt Shelagh," Hunter said faintly.  
  
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Bree sighed with disgust (most likely aimed at all of us) and stepped in between Raven and Robbie with a wide smile on her face.  
  
"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Eventide! I'm Bree Warren, one of Hunter and Sky's friends! It's so nice to meet you," she gushed, taking Aunt Shelagh's hand and shaking it enthusiastically. "I've heard so many good things about you from your daughter and your nephew. And –" She broke off with a sudden gasp. "Where did you get that jacket?"  
  
Aunt Shelagh looked a little taken aback.  
  
"Um ... this little private shop a few miles out of town ..."  
  
"Oh, I LOVE it! The embroidery around the neckline is just so adorable! And- And the sleeve designs! Do you have any others from that place?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, I have a few upstairs. Do you want to see them? My favorite is one that I think you'll like made from woven silk ..."  
  
With that, both Bree and Aunt Shelagh disappeared up the carpeted mahogany staircase while the rest of us stared at them in shock.  
  
"Um ..." was Hunter's response.  
  
"Isn't she great?" Robbie beamed proudly.  
  
"It's actually fortunate that your friend Bree managed to get Shelagh out of our hair," Beck said with a resigned sigh. "I'd like to talk to you two alone (he ostensibly meant Hunter and Sky) about what's been going on here."  
  
"You can talk to the others, too," Sky said calmly. "They want to help."  
  
"Yeah," Robbie said with a warm smile. "Count us in."  
  
"All right, then." It wasn't too hard for me to decide which one of Sky's parents that I liked best.  
  
Out in the backyard, which Beck led us to through a kitchen door, we saw how truly run-down this house had become; all of the plants in the backyard, grass included, were dead as they had been in the front yard. As I walked through the decaying flora, their names came to my mind. Rose. Lily. Orchid. A poor little feverfew bush that had just recently been planted.  
  
"Goddess ..." I heard Hunter say in shock as Uncle Beck pointed out the body of another dead chipmunk lying on the ground.  
  
"The poor creatures have been dying all over our property lately," he said with a dismal expression on his face. "Plants dead, dying even though we water them excessively. And it's not just us. All of the members of Radharc have been experiencing this sort of thing. The plants dying, animals wandering over just to drop ..."  
  
"We'll find out who's doing this, Da," Sky said determinedly.  
  
"Yes," Hunter agreed with a nod. "I'll have the council act on whoever it is that is doing this."  
  
"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention the coven around your aunt, Giomanach," Beck said tersely. "She's been ... well, things around here haven't been optimal lately. A lot's changed since the two of you left."  
  
"We know, Da," Sky said quietly.  
  
After yet another moment of uncomfortable silence (I was pretty sure we'd be seeing a lot of those around here), the three of them seemed to realize that the rest of us were there, just sort of hanging back, not wanting to intrude on their family businesses.  
  
"Anyway, on the subject of the dark magick," Beck said quickly, clearly attempting to drive the conversation towards less painful topics, "something needs to be done. Soon."  
  
"Well, tomorrow I'll get started questioning members of the coven and see if any of them have any idea of who could be doing this, and then I'll put some more watch and protection sigils around this house –"  
  
"We've been doing that."  
  
"But it might be better if more of us do it. Morgan can help, too." I gave Beck a wan smile. "And then I think I'll try to scry for any possible –"  
  
Uncle Beck finally interrupted Hunter's out-loud thinking process.  
  
"Giomanach ... we don't have time for all of this. Skip the interrogations and go right to the scrying, please. There's nothing that Shelagh and I can do further. Now, it's in the council's hands."  
  
Hunter looked confused. "Why can't you two do more?"  
  
Beck looked concerned for a moment before reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a small, wrinkled, very torn bit of paper.  
  
"Because, five days ago, we received this," he said quietly, handing the paper to Hunter. Hunter took it, opened it, and began to read whatever was written on the note aloud.  
  
"'At this time in a week, I'll kill you all.'"  
  
... "That means we've only got two days left."  
  
A/N: This chapter was kind of setting up what will happen in the next few, which I promise will be more entertaining. *SPOILER* In the next few chapters, Hunter and Morgan search for the witch using dark magick against Shelagh and Beck's coven, and Hunter learns an alarming fact about his guardians that they are afraid to tell Sky. 


	3. Gathering

Disclaimer: R&R ... yada, yada, yada ... you guys know what to do :) P.S.  
When Morgan is reminded of her paternal grandmother, it refers to Sean  
Rowlands' mother, not whoever is Ciaran's mother. Just wanted to  
clarify unless that confuses people.  
  
Summary: Tensions rise between Hunter and Sky and their  
guardians/parents as time rapidly runs out for the members of Shelagh  
and Beck's coven.  
  
PART III: Gathering  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"We are NOT having this conversation, Uncle Beck!"  
  
"Yes, we damn well are!"  
  
In case you couldn't tell from the yelling, Robbie, Raven, Sky, and I were all sitting in Beck and Shelagh's kitchen, listening to Hunter and Uncle Beck having a major row. By major, I mean apocalypse-y and practically measurable on the Richter scale.  
  
"No! I will not stand here and listen to you talking as if you're going to die in two days!"  
  
"I might! My entire coven may perish, and that's why we need you to keep a cool head about this!"  
  
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KEEP A COOL HEAD WHEN I'VE JUST BEEN TOLD THAT MY AUNT AND UNCLE, NOT TO MENTION AN ENTIRE COVEN OF PEOPLE, ARE ABOUT TO –"  
  
"What is all of the yelling in here?"  
  
Aunt Shelagh and Bree chose that moment to make their reentrance after spending about half an hour admiring their own wardrobes. While I may be of the same gender, I will never understand some of Bree's reasoning.  
  
Shelagh looked livid and turned her glare on Uncle Beck. "They're here for less than an hour and I already find you telling them information about our coven? I don't even know half of these people's names!"  
  
"Robbie," Robbie offered, holding up a hand nervously.  
  
"Raven."  
  
"Morgan."  
  
"See?" Uncle Beck asked genially. "Now no one here's a stranger."  
  
"Beck –"  
  
"Shelagh, they're trying to help! Can't you see that?"  
  
"Are you suggesting that I'm being defiant?"  
  
"Ma! Da!" It was Sky's turn to raise her voice as she quickly stood up from the table, her face red with anger. "God, why are you two fighting like this? I can't believe that you're being so stubborn about this, Ma! Admittedly, we brought a few more people along than we had originally planned, but –"  
  
"Athar, this is not the time or the place to be discussing this."  
  
"Anything that you can say to Hunter or I you can say to them!" She motioned the rest of us.  
  
I could see something changing in Aunt Shelagh from the moment that Sky said that. Maybe Sky realized it, too, because she suddenly fell completely silent.  
  
"If that is what you want, then I will." Shelagh took a small breath, her face furious and her eyes narrowed to hardly more than slits. "I wish you had listened to me in the first place, Athar, when I told you to go to Dublin."  
  
"That was my –" Sky started to say.  
  
"DO NOT INTERRUPT ME, ATHAR!" Aunt Shelagh screamed in fury. She turned her fuming stare to Hunter, who all but cowered from the sight. "I wish that you had listened to me when I told you not to join the council, Giomanach! You two have both embarrassed me FAR more than either your sisters or Alwyn did, and I suggest that, the moment that whoever is sending dark magick against our coven is discovered and stripped of his powers, you leave England." Her voice lowered about forty decibels. "Permanently."  
  
With that, she turned on her heels and stormed out of the room, slamming the kitchen door behind her.  
  
The tension in the room, if it were tangible, would probably have been about five feet thick. Hunter was staring in shell-shocked silence at the place where Aunt Shelagh had been standing about five seconds ago, as was Beck, who buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on the granite counter. Hunter slowly sank down into a chair around the small table; still stunned from what I had just witnessed, I took his hand in an I'm-trying-to- be-helpful-but-I-don't-really-know-what-to-say type of way; as Sky made an odd whimpering noise, Raven immediately was at her side and consoling her in whispers. Robbie and Bree were staring openly at all of us, their eyes wide with fear and worry as Uncle Beck finally lifted his face from his hands and gave a very forced smile.  
  
"Well ... I daresay that none of you have ever witnessed something like that before." No one spoke or moved. Quickly casting out my senses, I discovered that Bree was actually holding her breath. Beck clapped his hands together softly.  
  
"You'll never meet someone quite like Shelagh." He gave a feeble laugh. "Consider yourselves lucky ..." After a moment in which he looked down at the ground, he lifted his head again. "Dinner is in an hour. I'm making my world-famous rib roast with Portobello mushrooms, so don't be late."  
  
"We should unpack," Hunter said quietly, motioning to me with his eyes. I gave a slight nod, unwilling to speak or make noise of any kind, and slowly got up from the table to follow him into the living room.  
  
BREE'S P.O.V  
  
"That was ... intense."  
  
"I couldn't have phrased it better myself," Robbie said after a long moment as he hung two shirts on hangers in the wardrobe. "Hunter and Sky were crushed."  
  
"Bigger than crushed."  
  
"Demolished." I gave him an affectionate smile and tossed another shirt at him from out of his duffel bag (which was, unfortunately and very damaging to my fashion-sensitive eyes, bright yellow). As he hung it up and I neatly placed my last pair of pants into the drawer, we both sat down on the bed and leaned against each other.  
  
"They should tell you about the time differences before you go overseas," Robbie said with a chuckle. "It's almost dark here and I feel like it's time to be getting up."  
  
"Well ..." I grinned wickedly at him. "The fact that it'll be dark faster means that enjoyable activities involving the dark can come to pass sooner."  
  
Robbie, bless his timid little heart, looked appalled. "Bree, we're in a house full of people!"  
  
"There was sarcasm."  
  
Robbie flushed bright red and looked away as I grinned at him; I had always loved teasing him, even before we got together in the romantic sense. After a moment, though, a horrifying thought occurred to me. "Robbie?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Promise me that if we ever get married, we won't end up like Shelagh and Beck."  
  
"I definitely hope - We're getting married???"  
  
"It was hypothetical."  
  
"I knew that."  
  
RAVEN'S P.O.V  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
Of course she's not okay, you idiot. THAT was a smart thing to say.  
  
"... Yeah. I'm fine." I looked at her sympathetically.  
  
"Liar."  
  
From where Sky has been standing at her dresser staring into the mirror, I saw her smile. I stood up from the bed with a sigh and looked into the mirror, standing next to her. She looked so tired.  
  
"Are you going to be okay?"  
  
"Eventually. It's just overwhelming. Being back here."  
  
"Yeah ..." I wrapped my arms around her waist gently and rested my head on her shoulder. "Parents can be pains in the ass."  
  
"You're telling me," she smiled. We didn't say anything for a moment, just enjoying the comfortable silence, before she spoke again. "I'm glad you're here."  
  
I grinned playfully at her. "Of course I'm here. You think I'd let you go off to England by yourself for three months? You're not getting rid of me that easily."  
  
"... That's good to know."  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Well, that was painful," I said quietly as Hunter and I walked down the gravel path in front of 53 West Kingston Drive, remembering with frustration the affair that dinner that night had been. While Uncle Beck was and definitely deserved to be a master chef, even the incredible taste of his mushrooms and ribs couldn't take away from the utter silence of the table, the tension between all seated nearly touchable. Sky and Hunter had both spent the entire dinner concentrating on their plates only to say "Pass the salt" or "This is really good, Da", and Shelagh hadn't even said anything at all, only glancing, still angry, at Uncle Beck out of the corners of her eyes.  
  
"Painful is an understatement," Hunter sighed, looking at the ground. "I wanted to bolt at least three times."  
  
"Understandable."  
  
He smiled at me and kissed my forehead affectionately, and I felt with a tingle the warm, gushy feeling always associated with Hunter kissage. It had nearly killed me to feel Hunter's pain regarding his guardians, who had acted as his parents for nearly all of his life, and the confusion he felt for them. It was time to forget what had happened earlier today, though, and start questioning members of the coven as to who or possibly what had been torturing them with dark magick.  
  
Hunter rang the door ringer on the simple one-level brick cottage that, according to Uncle Beck, belonged to Maggie and Rupert Fisher, two members of Briongloid Radharc. The bright red door didn't budge for a moment before a large, friendly-faced woman with waist-length gray hair answered it.  
  
"Mrs. Fisher?" Hunter asked politely.  
  
"Yes?" she answered in a sweet voice that reminded me of my paternal grandmother.  
  
"My name is Hunter Niall, and this is Morgan Rowlands," he said warmly, motioning to both himself and to me. "I'm with the council, and I'd like to ask you some questions about your coven."  
  
The woman's friendly exterior instantly changed from kind and motherly to afraid and fearful as her eyes widened proportionally.  
  
"I-I'm afraid I don't –"  
  
"You are, of course, aware that dark magick has been attacking your coven by some unknown sender?"  
  
"Of-Of course I am, but what do you want with me? I haven't been –"  
  
"Mrs. Fisher, you are not under suspicion. Beck and Shelagh Eventide, my guardians, speak very highly of you," Hunter said quickly, and Maggie visibly relaxed. "I just need to ask you some questions about what sort of things have happened around here lately."  
  
"Oh ... well ..." She sighed reluctantly after a moment. "Please come in."  
  
As Maggie lead us through her foyer and into her living room, I noticed that it was furnished in much the same way as Shelagh and Beck's cottage was; a stone fireplace built into the wall of the living room was home to a crackling fire, and I could feel its warmth standing seven feet away. As I sat down next to Hunter on a plush velvet green couch and Maggie Fisher sat down across from us in a really ugly yellow chair that would have sent Bree into a fashion fit, I noticed the tenseness with which she kept glancing at the front door.  
  
"What sorts of things have happened to you, personally, as a result of the dark magick?" Hunter asked her, and I recognized the change from my warm, cuddly Hunter to the council's interrogative, always-questioning Hunter with a sigh.  
  
"Well, it's not been as bad as Shelagh and Beck," Maggie said, her British accent more pronounced than before in her nervousness. "I feel awful for them, poor dears, all of their beautiful flowers dead ... for the rest of us, it's been mostly little things. My car won't run, my electricity goes out sporadically and without probable cause ..."  
  
"Can you think of anyone who might have a personal vendetta against your coven or want to hurt someone in it?" I asked in concern.  
  
Maggie looked truly worried. "Hurt someone? I'd wager not. Our coven is made of none but pure hearts and gentle souls." Thinking of Aunt Shelagh, I barely managed to stifle a snort. "But ... I can't speak for everyone when I say that I have no enemies. I know everyone in the coven, and we're all wonderful friends, but this seems the sort of thing that I would expect someone with a secret would keep known to no one but themselves, am I correct?"  
  
"Most likely," Hunter sighed, and I could tell that he was realizing that this could be harder than he had expected. Suddenly, though, he looked around him. "Is your husband home? Rupert Fisher?"  
  
"Ah, no, he's not," Maggie said. "He's gone to the store for a few things, so I'm here alone at the moment. If you want to wait, he should be back shortly. I could –"  
  
"No, that's all right," Hunter said, interrupting her. "I don't think that there's very much for me here. I may be stopping by again, though."  
  
"Oh, please," Maggie said cordially. "I do not entertain very often, so it is nice to have guests on occasion."  
  
As Hunter and I stepped back outside through the front door and began walking down the street away from the Fisher household, I noticed how my boyfriend kept glancing over his shoulder back at the brick home. I laced my hand through his and looked up at him.  
  
"What's wrong? You look confused."  
  
"I'm just ..." He sighed. "I got the feeling in there that she wasn't being completely truthful with us."  
  
"Honestly? Me, too," I admitted. "Did you see how she kept looking towards the door all nervously? Do you think she was hiding something?" A thought suddenly struck me. "Maybe she's a mass murderer and she was worried about her accomplice bursting through the door with a brand new body while we were there!"  
  
Hunter looked grossed out. "Morgan!"  
  
I giggled slightly. "Sorry. All this detective stuff has gone to my head."  
  
"I sensed a lot of barrier spells and concealment charms coming from all over the place, though," he said quietly, lowering his voice as if making sure that, should Maggie still be listening to us even though we were far away from her house now, she couldn't hear us. "That is the thing that made me the most suspicious."  
  
"How can you sense concealment charms?" I asked in confusion. "Isn't their purpose to ... conceal?"  
  
"Yes, but one can normally feel the essence of all magickal people coming from a home." Seeing my perplexed look, he launched into explanation mode (during which he looks, unbelievably, even hotter). "I sensed a lot of ... confusion coming from that house. Maggie was feeling it, but the emotions were ..." He trailed off for a moment, and I wondered if I should press the issue. "I ... I have reason to believe that she lied to us when she said that she was alone in the house. It would make much more sense for another person to be there, as well."  
  
"Magickal or non? Maybe what you were feeling was just a pet."  
  
"No. I'm fairly certain that it was a human being. As for the magick in their blood ... I can't say."  
  
Feeling more confused than enlightened by his explanation, I trotted after him as we headed back to Shelagh and Beck's cottage to face the firing squad once more.  
  
SHELAGH AND BECK'S COTTAGE  
  
"Hey, Morgan. Hey, Hunter," Bree greeted us amiably from where she, Robbie, and Raven were playing poker on the living room's coffee table. "Come join us!"  
  
Hunter looked apologetic. "Sorry, Bree. I can't. I have to get through questioning at least half of the coven tonight." I looked at him in surprise.  
  
"What? Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
"Morgan, we've only got two days before this situation will become undeniably more dire. Maggie may have been calm, albeit slightly suspicious, but I'm not going to drag you along with me every time. This is council business."  
  
"But I want to help you."  
  
"I know that you do, love," he said gently. "But it's too dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt."  
  
Seeing the look of need in his eyes, the need for me to understand, I nodded slowly and reluctantly. This was clearly something that he felt he needed to do on his own.  
  
"All right," I said quietly. "Just ... hurry back, okay? And be careful." He turned to leave again, but not before I stopped him. "Oh, and try not to piss anyone off, okay? I don't want my boyfriend to be char-broiled by witch-fire."  
  
Hunter just smiled at me, squeezed my hand briefly, and then turned down the hallway to go out the front door.  
  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
Goddess, I had never been so bored during interrogations before. After questioning over fifteen members of Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's coven, I stumbled into the cottage through the back kitchen door past midnight, completely and thoroughly exhausted. After grabbing myself a glass of cold milk from the icebox, I was about to go up the stairs to bed, not even needing to turn on a light in the dim, deserted hallway to find the staircase, when a voice called my name.  
  
"Giomanach."  
  
After jumping about a foot in the air out of surprise, I realized that the voice belonged to Uncle Beck and was coming from the living room.  
  
"Uncle Beck? It's past twelve o'clock. What are you doing up?"  
  
Uncle Beck was sitting on the couch in the living room, watching the embers in the fireplace glimmering and dying out. He looked exhausted, and had clearly been waiting up for me to arrive back.  
  
"I wanted to talk to you when we wouldn't be interrupted by the others. They've already gone to bed."  
  
I walked into the living room, my eyes getting heavier with each step, and plopped down on the coffee table in front of Uncle Beck. He looked at me and then leaned forward, his hands folded together.  
  
"Giomanach ... this may not be the best time to tell you this, and believe me, I feel horrible about forcing this information on you when you're exhausted, but ... there's something that you need to know. About your aunt and I."  
  
I stared at him in fear, listening intently now. This sounded extremely serious.  
  
"As you may have noticed ... Shelagh and I haven't been getting along as well as we used to. We fight more often, almost every day about one thing or another. I've ... We've decided to legally, as well as spiritually, separate."  
  
Something inside me crashed.  
  
"We're divorcing, Giomanach. Our papers have already been filed, and it should be finalized in a few weeks. Our high priestess has already performed the rites of separation."  
  
No. This couldn't be right. Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck were muirn beatha dans, weren't they? I had always thought that they were. How could they be ...  
  
Oh, Goddess.  
  
"Sky," I whispered, so quietly that I barely heard myself say it.  
  
"We're terrified of telling her about this," Uncle Beck murmured. "It's been the one thing that we can agree on."  
  
"This will destroy her," I said, my voice raising slightly.  
  
"I know that, but –"  
  
"Why did you tell me like this? Do you want me to tell her for you? Is that what you want?" My voice had raised louder.  
  
"Giomanach, be quiet, the others will –"  
  
"I DON'T GIVE A DAMN!" When he didn't respond, just looked at me with sadness in his eyes, I forcibly calmed myself down and evened out my heavy breathing. "Uncle Beck ... how is this happening?"  
  
"... I cannot agree with her on several things. Several differences are just ... unable to be compromised. This is the only way, we both agree on that, but we both also know that Sky will blame herself. She has ... a history of doing that."  
  
I closed my eyes against the stream of painful memories concerning that truth.  
  
"Uncle Beck ..."  
  
"Giomanach, we need your help. You're closer to her than Shelagh ever was, and you've known her these past years when we have barely heard from her. Please ... help us."  
  
I looked up at him, cold fury in my eyes.  
  
"I thought I already was."  
  
A/N: shuddergasp The secret is revealed!!! Lol, sorry, I'm kind of a loser that way. Anyways, what do you think so far? Please review, because your reviews determine how long the story continues! Anyway, the situation with Sky, her "history" issues, Hunter, Shelagh, and Beck will be further explored in the next few chapters and probably revealed in the next. I know I've been saying that for a while, but it will, I promise! So please don't hurt me cowers hehe ... About the dark magick ... later on, the mystery thickens with rumors surrounding Maggie Fisher and other members of Briongloid Radharc (which, by the way, means "Dream Sight" in Gaelic ... ;) just thought it sounded prettyful). So that's it for now, but I'll be back later! TTYL, love you all, and REVIEW!!! REVIEW!!! REVIEW!!! 


	4. Stifled

Disclaimer: I don't own Sweep. If I did, would I really be resorting  
to fanfiction? I don't think so. ;) In addition, the name "Cràdh"  
means pain, anguish, or torment. Thought it was fitting.  
  
Summary: Hunter and Sky are beset upon by dark magick themselves and  
finally learn the truth behind Maggie Fisher's mysterious past.  
  
PART IV: Stifled  
  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
I had always thought that Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck were soulmates. How could I not, having lived with them for practically my entire life? When I was young, they hardly ever fought about anything and always seemed so happy together. Now, though, I guess that's changed. A lot, apparently. Seeing Aunt Shelagh being so cruel to Sky and I was sort of a wakeup call, for both of us, I think ... before our row involving me joining the council and Sky turning down the Dublin offer, we had always gotten along fine. Sure, Uncle Beck was always closer to both of us than she was, but, still, one doesn't expect to hear such things as "You're a failure" from one's aunt.  
  
Not that she said that. I just think that she really wanted to.  
  
A divorce ... legal as well as spiritual ... I had known that this happened to members of the magickal community, and I even knew some kids growing up whose parents had done so ... hell, my father and Selene were one couple, even though I'm not really sure if they were ever legally married or just had a little too much fun together that resulted in Cal. Selene wasn't someone that my father enjoyed talking about, which is completely understandable. Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck were different, though. I never figured that they would get a divorce, but I was wrong. I had thought that they were muirn beatha dans, but I was wrong there, too.  
  
And now they wanted me to help them tell Sky. Or do it myself.  
  
Urg.  
  
How am I supposed to tell my cousin, my best friend in the entire world, that her parents are divorcing? Suddenly I'm mad. REALLY mad. Beck and Shelagh know about Sky's emotional ups and downs. How can they expect me to do this by myself?  
  
I won't relive what happened after Linden died. I swear that to myself now.  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Morning, sleepyhead," I whispered into Hunter's ear when I woke up the next morning. When he didn't respond, I noticed how worn out he looked, as if he was pretty much dead to the world. I sighed. Might as well let him sleep for a few more hours. He hadn't gotten back to the cottage until after midnight, and when he came into the bedroom, he just plopped down on the bed without so much as a "goodnight, Morgan." I knew that he must be exhausted.  
  
It turned out, much to my dismay, that Shelagh and Beck's cottage has only two bathrooms and only one has a shower. When I plodded downstairs into the kitchen, I was met with the weary faces of Sky, Bree, Raven, Robbie, and Uncle Beck, all of whom were waiting for Aunt Shelagh to finish up in the bathroom while eating bacon and scrambled eggs.  
  
"She has been in there ... for two hours," Bree muttered, stifling a yawn in the middle of her sentence.  
  
"We think she's avoiding us," Robbie said matter-of-factly.  
  
As I sat down at the table next to Bree with a fatigued sigh and pulled a plate of bacon and eggs towards myself, I glanced over to see Uncle Beck looking at me strangely, his expression kind of puzzled. It looked like he was wondering something but too afraid to ask it. I quickly diverted my eyes from his, feeling slightly embarrassed, but couldn't help wondering myself what HE had been wondering.  
  
Finally, the sound of the shower's running water stopped, signaling that Shelagh was finally done in the bathroom. Uncle Beck hurried out of the kitchen as Sky looked at a list written on a notebook that read: UNCLE BECK, BREE, ROBBIE, SKY, RAVEN, MORGAN, HUNTER. I groaned. Great. I had to wait for practically everyone else to finish in the bathroom before I would even have a chance to set foot inside it.  
  
It suddenly occurred to me how strange it was that all of us were sitting here at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and impatiently waiting for our turns in the shower, when at this very moment, we had less than two days to figure out who had been sending death threats to the coven. Weird.  
  
"Sky." Hunter had appeared in the kitchen doorway, his hair still unkempt and his clothes wrinkled and creased. It was obvious that he had just woken up.  
  
"Yeth?" Sky asked, her mouth still full of cranberry muffin.  
  
"Can I talk to you? Now?"  
  
"Thure."  
  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
"We have a problem," I said urgently as I pulled my cousin into the living room and out of earshot of the others. She swallowed the mouthful of muffin that she was chewing and looked at me blankly.  
  
"Um ... I'm well aware of that, Hunter. That's what we're doing here."  
  
I sighed in frustration and forced her to sit down on the couch. "You don't understand. Where's Uncle Beck?"  
  
"In the shower. Ma took forever, so now it's his turn." She looked apologetic. "You're last on the list, sorry."  
  
"That's okay. We have bigger issues than this. I was scrying just now, upstairs after I woke up, and ..." I trailed off, unsure of how to phrase what I had seen in my lueg. Sky looked worried now.  
  
"What did you see?" My mind was still thinking through the visions I had received. The pain ... the agony ... the despair ... Suddenly, I felt a slap to my head. "HUNTER!"  
  
"Sorry," I muttered, shaking my head slightly as if to clear my vision. "Goddess ... it's bad, Sky. Really bad." The smoke ... it was choking me ... "This person ... whoever is behind the dark magick ... they're serious, Sky. They're going to kill everyone."  
  
Now she looked positively terrified. "How do we stop them? I mean, we don't even know who –"  
  
"I have a few questions for Maggie Fisher. She ... I saw her in my vision. She was ... she was standing over their bodies."  
  
Sky's eyebrows furrowed. "Whose bodies?"  
  
I sighed in distress and looked down for an instant before meeting her gaze again. "Shelagh and Beck's."  
  
TWENTY MINUTES LATER  
  
Sky hadn't said anything after a tight "Let's go" twenty minutes earlier. As she strode down the sidewalk in front of Maggie Fisher's house, I had to struggle to keep up with her.  
  
"Sky, wait –"  
  
She stopped and whirled around to face me and I almost ran into her. "WAIT?? Hunter, what do you want me to do? This woman is going to kill my parents! Am I just supposed to sit back until it's too late to help them?"  
  
"No!" I said, shocked. "Sky, the problem is, we don't have a plan! We can't just go rushing in there angrily and expect her to put up with us! She's hiding something, I know, and I know that you're frustrated, but we need more evidence before I can arrest her on abuse of magick charges."  
  
"Like hell," Sky whispered, her voice shaking with fury. "She's lying. I'm going to prove it."  
  
While Sky knocked, or more accurately, pounded, on Maggie's door, I realized the truth of the situation that we were in; time was running out to rescue Briongloid Radharc, and there was no room for small talk. This was the action that needed to be taken.  
  
"Here," I said, and began beating the door with great force. "Maggie Fisher, open this door by the order of the International Council of Witches!"  
  
A man and kid walking down the street with a dog, clearly non-witches, looked at me a little strangely when I yelled that, but I ignored them. Chances were, they were probably used to weird things going on in a town heavily populated by magickal folk.  
  
Eventually, the red door to the Fisher residence opened and Maggie Fisher, her gray hair disheveled and wrapped in an untidy bun, poked her head out.  
  
"Yes?" She noticed me. "Oh, Mr. Niall! Welcome back! How may I help you today?"  
  
"I –"I started to say, but Sky beat me to it.  
  
"How about you answer the question of why my cousin saw you standing over my parents' dead bodies in his scrying stone?"  
  
I elbowed her in the ribs. "Sky!"  
  
Maggie narrowed her eyes and glared at the both of us. "I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
"Mrs. Fisher –"Once again, Sky interrupted me.  
  
"Are you the one using dark magick against Briongloid Radharc?" she demanded, her voice rising. "Are you using dark magick against your own coven?"  
  
I gripped Sky's arm so tightly that she let out a cry of pain and used that opportunity to clap a hand over her mouth.  
  
"Maggie, I'm terribly sorry, I don't know what's –"  
  
"Please leave, Mr. Niall," Maggie said coldly, her voice no longer sweet and grandmother-like. Now, her dark eyes were practically emitting sparks of anger, and her face was growing redder and redder. I stared at her in shock.  
  
"But –"  
  
"Get out! Now! Get off my property!"  
  
"Mrs. Fisher, I need to talk to you, I have some more questions that I need to –"  
  
Suddenly I felt sick. As in, nauseously sick. Releasing Sky, who had been struggling to free herself, I clutched my stomach in pain with a groan as sharp pangs of agony shot through my body. As Maggie slammed her front door in our faces with a mighty thud, I realized that she had put a spell on me. Sky, too, from the looks of it, was also suffering because her face was suddenly even paler than normal and she too was clutching her stomach in distress.  
  
"Hunter ... she did something ..." she gasped, clearly struggling not to vomit.  
  
"Yes ... she ... she ..." I gave a strangled noise that sounded strange even to my own ears, leaned over the railing of her front porch, and emptied my stomach right on top of a blooming rosebush. My gut still raging in turmoil, I pulled at the doorknob and tried an unlocking charm; however, it didn't budge. Maggie must have put some kind of blocking spell on it. Sky, who was sitting on the stone porch in a fetal position, hugging her knees to her chest and murmuring something over and over under her breath, was attempting to reverse the spell with no luck whatsoever.  
  
"Come on," I muttered, and, pulling Sky up by the arm, we took off running down the street.  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Do you feel better?" I asked Hunter worriedly, readjusting the pillow that his head was resting on. "Do you want some more pillows, because I saw some in the linens closet across the hall ..."  
  
Hunter gave a small laugh. "No, love, I'm fine. I just need to recover for a moment."  
  
"Or an hour," Sky said with a satirical grin.  
  
"Are you sure that Maggie Fisher did this?" Uncle Beck asked in quiet concern, examining his daughter and nephew.  
  
"Unless it was someone that looks remarkably like her ... yes," Hunter replied.  
  
"But why?" Uncle Beck asked, confused. "Why would Maggie do this to the two of you? I don't understand."  
  
"Maybe if Sky hadn't been so spiteful –"  
  
Sky looked outraged. "This wasn't my fault!" She looked at Uncle Beck. "Da, I'm almost certain that Mrs. Fisher is the one sending death threats to you. Why ELSE would she do this to the two of us? She knows that Hunter is your nephew and that I'm your daughter."  
  
The clinking of silverware and cups on a tray announced the arrival of Aunt Shelagh, who bustled into the living room from the kitchen carrying a tea tray with a steaming teapot, two silver cups, and a plate piled high with biscuits.  
  
"Okay, I've got some herbal tea, even added some prairie clover and lemongrass to help the stomachaches, and some blueberry biscuits."  
  
She gave Hunter and Sky weak smiles as she set the tray down on the table in front of the couch where they were both resting and poured their drinks. Both took huge cups of tea and, within seconds, were both looking much better.  
  
"I have to make a report to the council about this," Hunter said the moment that Shelagh had disappeared back into the kitchen to escape the awkward silence.  
  
"Yes, yes ..." Uncle Beck murmured, his eyes unfocused as he looked off into the distance. "Maggie Fisher ... who would have thought ... she always seemed so ..."  
  
"Innocent?" Shelagh asked, coming into the living room again and sitting down across from Uncle Beck on a recliner with her own cup of tea. "Yes, I always thought so, too. But, considering what happened a few years ago ..."  
  
My ears perked up, as did everyone else's.  
  
"What happened a few years ago?" I asked curiously.  
  
I saw Aunt Shelagh give Beck a look with her eyebrows slightly raised, and he took the hint and nodded.  
  
"Um, would the rest of you ..."  
  
Oh. I took that as my cue and stood up, Bree and Robbie doing the same. Raven kissed the top of Sky's head before the four of us disappeared into the kitchen and looked at each other for a moment.  
  
"Are we going to spy?" Bree asked rhetorically.  
  
Not even bothering to give her an answer, I pressed my ear to the closed kitchen door and concentrated, casting my senses out gently so that I could hear what Shelagh and Beck were telling Sky and Hunter.  
  
"... had a son named Cràdh Fisher."  
  
"Who's a bad fisher?" Robbie whispered in confusion, struggling to hear the conversation. I shushed him with my hand and concentrated again. Shelagh was talking.  
  
"... bastard of a human being. He was a drunkard, pathetic excuse for a man. But, for some reason, Maggie cared deeply for him. She defended him when he was accused of shoplifting over five hundred pounds of goods from a store about half an hour away. The situation wasn't helped any by the fact that he was a witch."  
  
Now it was Uncle Beck's turn. "Cràdh had the most disrespect for magick out of anyone that I've ever met in my entire life. He used it to torment others by casting illusions and glamours on unsuspecting witches and non- witches, and even used an illusion charm to kill an entire flock of geese." I heard both Hunter and Sky inhale sharply. "Don't ask how. It'll just upset you."  
  
"How could he not have gotten in trouble before?" Hunter asked in shock.  
  
"He did, believe me." Shelagh was talking again. "Many times. He had run- ins with the local police, the London police, and members of the council. He never stopped abusing magick, though, because he was never told to."  
  
"Didn't his parents stop him?"  
  
"Are you being serious? I already told you. Maggie adored the boy, and so did Rupert, her husband. They practically thought that he was a miracle incarnate. Never punished him for what he was doing, although maybe they should have enforced the Threefold Law a little more effectively ... Anyway, a few years ago, when Cràdh was about twenty or twenty-one, a ..." She stopped for a moment before talking again. "A series of rapes in this town and in a few nearby started happening."  
  
Those of us in the kitchen were barely moving, straining to hear every word.  
  
"The cases baffled the police," Uncle Beck was saying. "They were always at night, so the girls, mostly around your ages, couldn't tell who it was that had raped them. In fact, they could barely remember what had happened to them, but they knew that something had. Frankly, this wasn't something that the police had to deal with every day."  
  
"Some of the members of Briongloid Radharc, us included, decided to do a group scrying session to attempt to find out who was performing the rapes," Aunt Shelagh continued. "We came up with one unanimous suspect: Cràdh Fisher." She paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. "It wasn't exactly a surprise to come up with him, if you can imagine. Several people, mostly the Fishers' next door neighbors, had said that they had seen Cràdh coming home at practically dawn on some nights, ironically the same nights that the rapes had been done."  
  
"Goddess ..." I heard Sky whisper, stunned.  
  
"We all, of course, went to the police, but because we had no concrete evidence that they would accept and Rupert Fisher was, and still is, an influential member of the city council, they didn't believe us. We were about ready to bind Cràdh's powers when the law enforcement officials caught him in ... well ... let's just say that it was obvious that he was the guilty party."  
  
"Were Maggie and Rupert crushed?" Hunter asked quietly.  
  
"There was reason to believe that they already knew what was going on, but for the most part, yes. Their reputations went downhill from there because Rupert all but abandoned his wife and Maggie began binge drinking at least three times a week. Trying to drown out her sorrows, I suppose."  
  
"Then, a few weeks after he was arrested, an event tragic for Maggie and Rupert occurred. Cràdh was cornered in his jail cell by members of the International Council of Witches and stripped of his magickal powers."  
  
"Why?" Sky asked. "What he did were felonies, yes, but not crimes against magick."  
  
"Oh, he had it coming to him, my princess. He had been performing crimes against magick for years, and it was just a matter of time before he lost the right to so much as invoke the Goddess. No, the council members discovered that he had used a form of magickal mind control, a mix of several binding spells, in actuality, to subdue his rape victims."  
  
"What makes you think that he's got something to do with the threats to your coven?"  
  
"Well, after having his powers stripped, Cràdh was sent away to a mental institution in Scotland for a while, but that's not to say that he hasn't been released or that he hasn't escaped."  
  
I shivered involuntarily. A magick abuser, rapist, and convict. This guy terrified me, and I had never even met him.  
  
"If he has somehow left the institution, one would figure he would just love a chance to take revenge on the people that shut him away and lost him his powers in the first place."  
  
"But if he can't perform magick anymore, how could he be the one killing all of your plants and flowers? He wouldn't have the ability to do that."  
  
"Cràdh had friends, Giomanach. Powerful witch friends, maybe even more powerful than you are. I don't know. This could be something that they've been planning ever since he was shut away in prison."  
  
"I wonder if he is back," Aunt Shelagh said with a wearied sigh. "This could be the apocalypse for us all here, and I'm not overestimating him. Every so often, a witch comes along with a true fascination with death and destruction. Most recently, Selene Belltower and Ciaran MacEwan." I felt a little sting at hearing my true father's name and the disgust in Shelagh's voice when she said the names of dark witches. "And Cràdh Fisher. I wouldn't be surprised if it were him."  
  
"We'll stop him, Ma," Sky assured her softly. "If it's him, we won't let him do anything."  
  
The four of us in the kitchen looked at each other, our eyes wide with fear and disbelief, at what we had just heard. This was bigger than magick abuse. This was about one person's crusade for ultimate vengeance. I knew how dangerous those could be.  
  
Goddess, please protect us.  
  
A/N: Well, there's another chapter for the story. Special thanks to Rhiannan Star and Saz-646 for their many encouraging reviews! Love you guys, and pleeeeease keep reading! For those of you that read but don't review, pretty please do both? More will be revealed in future chapters, but not until I say so! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! -slaps self- sorry, had a weird moment there hehe :) 


	5. Return

Disclaimer: La-dee-da ... review ... yeah ... lol ...  
  
Summary: Morgan, Hunter, and Sky spy on Maggie Fisher and her son  
Cràdh and reach a grim conclusion about their situation.  
  
PART V: Return  
  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
"Sky."  
  
No response.  
  
"Sky!"  
  
Still no response. She left me no choice but to send her a witch message. A loud one.  
  
-SKY, GET UP!-  
  
As she shot up in bed with a loud cry of pain and clutched her head at what must have been a reverberating boom sounding inside her, I frowned. That might not have been a very good idea. True, now she was awake, but when she's pissed off, Sky is a force to be reckoned with. Morgan was standing behind me in the upstairs hallway, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet nervously.  
  
"Shhh!" she whispered into the room. "You'll wake everyone else up!"  
  
As Sky stormed over to the bedroom door that Morgan and I were peeking into, now fully awake and very aggravated, I jumped back to avoid the hand that she was clearly set on hitting me with.  
  
"What the hell was that for???"  
  
"You need to come with us," I said quietly, lowering my voice so as not to wake Raven up. "We're going back to Maggie's house."  
  
She looked very irked. "Hunter, it's past midnight!"  
  
"That's why we have to go now," Morgan explained, still checking down the hallway for any signs that anyone else had awakened. "She'll either be asleep or off her guard."  
  
"Now is the time to gather some concrete evidence that she's been doing dark magick," I said hastily. "But we have to go now, or else one of the others might wake up."  
  
"We already have evidence!" Sky cried, her voice rising as Morgan and I both desperately held up hands to try to calm her down. "She tried to give me a freaking hernia! That's pretty solid evidence, if you ask me!"  
  
"Oh, just come with us, will you?" I asked irritably. I tried another edge. "Besides, if you don't, Morgan and I could both die because she would maim us with her evil magick and we wouldn't have another blood witch to protect us."  
  
Sky sighed with frustration. "Give me five minutes." She then proceeded to slam the door in my face. Or, rather, on my face.  
  
"Ow! Sky!"  
  
"Sorry." She didn't sound very sorry.  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
Six and a half minutes later, Sky plodded into the kitchen wearing what I recognized as Raven's leather jacket over her pajamas and still looking righteously angry.  
  
"What took you so long?" Hunter asked as he pulled on his own jacket and headed out of the kitchen and into the foyer.  
  
"Gee, sorry, Hunter," she said sarcastically. "I only had to explain to my girlfriend why I was stealing her precious jacket and sneaking out of the house at 12:30 am."  
  
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Hunter said touchily as he pushed open the front door and held it open for Sky and I.  
  
They continued squabbling all the way down the street while I walked slightly ahead of them, giggling at Hunter's I'm-not-listening-I'm-not- listening-I'm-not-listening's as Sky began describing, in detail, how exactly she had managed to persuade Raven to lend her the jacket. As I walked, though, I noticed how eerie the night had become from the time that we had left Shelagh and Beck's cabin to now on the side street that we were walking through. There had previously been audible the sounds of several night insects buzzing around and a few birds left chirping, but now the noise level had plummeted. I was barely aware of my feet making any noise as they walked down the gravel path that lead to 53 West Kingston Drive. I had already started walking up the path leading to the door when Hunter grabbed me and pulled me back to where he and Sky were hiding behind a huge clump of hedges.  
  
"Wait," he muttered. "We need to conceal ourselves so that she can't see us."  
  
After the three of us had all traced hundreds of drawings of Laguz, the rune for concealment, on our skin and clothes and had repeated the "I-am- invisible" spell at length, we crept up silently (except for the "hey!" that Sky hissed when Hunter stepped on the back of her shoe) and ducked down underneath one of the windows that was built into the wall of Maggie Fisher's living room.  
  
"I'd just like to say right now that if I feel even the slightest pangs of a stomachache, I'm going back," Sky whispered.  
  
"If something happens, I'll be the first one running," I assured her, my heart rate speeding up as it hit me that we were trespassing on a witch's property. A witch with no problems in using dark magick against others. Great.  
  
"Would you two shut up?" Hunter asked in frustration. "If you were being quiet, you would have noticed that someone is coming."  
  
Sky and I both wisely fell silent as what Hunter said proved itself true; the lone taps of a single pair of shoes walking up the pathway towards the house drew nearer and nearer until, peering around the corner, we could see the vague outline of a tall, thin man pulling out a key, inserting it in the keyhole, and opening the front door. Racing back to the window as quietly as we could, I cautiously raised my head to see through the window and into Maggie's living room. It was connected to the entrance hallway near the front door, and I saw her, easily distinguishable because of the waist-length gray hair, hurry towards the man that had just entered her house and pull him into the living room.  
  
Feeling Hunter and Sky doing the same, I cast out my senses so that I could hear what she was saying to the man, who was in better light now due to the single lamp that was lit in Maggie's living room. I involuntarily shivered at the sight of one of the most physically scary people that I had ever seen. The man wasn't horribly disfigured, but his pointed nose, cold gray eyes, and thin mouth gave him the appearance of a rat. A really ugly rat.  
  
"Cràdh, how many times do I have to ask you not to do this?" Maggie's voice was pleading.  
  
I felt my heart rate spike. Cràdh? Cràdh Fisher? The magickal abuser, rapist, and convict? I felt Sky and Hunter both tense, as well, and silently made a prayer to the Goddess that we not be seen.  
  
"What do you mean, Mother? I'm home before curfew." Cràdh's voice was cold and sinister, just as I had expected it to be. I shuddered as if I had just heard Bree's manicured fingernails scraping a chalkboard.  
  
"You have no curfew." Now Maggie was angry.  
  
"Oh, then why am I in trouble?" Cràdh smirked, and I could see his pointed teeth reflected in the light from the lamp. He looked even more like a rat when he smirked.  
  
"Cràdh, people from the council were here today! Shelagh and Beck Eventide's daughter and nephew! Somehow, they know what's going on. They know that I've been using dark magick against Radharc."  
  
I felt Hunter give a silent cheer of triumph in his head.  
  
"Mother, don't worry," Cràdh said, his voice taking on a soothing edge that actually made me more uncomfortable. "No one will find out that it's you. That is, of course, if you've taken the proper precautions."  
  
"I have," Maggie insisted. "Blocking spells, concealment charms, runes of protection and harm to outsiders on the outside of the house ..."  
  
The three of us gathered outside all scooted a little bit away from the windowsill.  
  
Maggie's voice now took on an accusing tone. "Cràdh, I want this to stop. Now. You've had your chance for vengeance, and if I get caught by that Niall boy, there won't be anyone left to help you because I'll be locked away by the council."  
  
"Father would help me."  
  
"Your father doesn't care about you, and you know it," Maggie said sharply. "The only reason that he's ever helped you was because I asked him to. You're an embarrassment to him and to everyone else in this sorry town, but I do have some sympathy for you. You are my son. My only child. I will help you and aid you, but this dark magick tirade has gone on long enough."  
  
"Are you saying that you won't do this for me anymore?" Cràdh sounded deadly.  
  
"Don't you take that tone with me, Cràdh! Now, until my magickal attacks against the coven have dissipated and those two blonde interlopers have left, I want you under seclusion in your room. Your father and I will see to it that you cannot escape. If you attempt to defy my orders, I will not hesitate to use my magick against you and force you to remain unknown. Goodnight, Cràdh."  
  
With a final withering look at her estranged son, Maggie turned and swept down the hallway out of view with a swish of her robe. Seconds later, however, she reappeared.  
  
"Do you hear something?"  
  
I instantly retracted my senses and quieted my breathing, doing as little movement as possible. My knees, which had dug into the soil of the flowerbed underneath the window, were numb with cold, as were my hands and fingers.  
  
"No."  
  
"Someone is out there."  
  
"That's our cue," Hunter murmured to Sky and I, and with a gentle shove, we crept out from underneath the window just as Maggie thrust it open and glared out at the surrounding darkness.  
  
"Who's there?" she demanded, her voice rising louder and louder.  
  
"Go! Go!" Hunter hissed at me, and, followed by him and Sky, I took off sprinting down the path away from the house, not caring if Maggie heard me anymore as long as I could get away. Suddenly, though, a bright blue streak of light whizzed by my head about half a centimeter from my ear with a burning heat and struck a nearby tree, which groaned and nearly burst into flames. Maggie had shot witch fire at us.  
  
"Hurry!" Sky said urgently as she deflected another crackle of witch fire with an invisible screen emanating from her outstretched hand and sent it disappearing into the shrubbery around the Fisher house, which promptly went up in an orange and red blaze. This was enough to distract Maggie and Cràdh, who had joined her at the window, as the three of us raced to safety away from the house. Extending my senses once more, I could hear that Maggie was now on the telephone, presumably dialing the local fire squad.  
  
"Yes, this is Maggie Fisher at 53 West Kingston Drive. There's a fire on my property ... some of my hedges are burning ... no, I don't know how it happened ... thank you. Please hurry."  
  
Hunter, Sky, and I didn't stop running until we had made it safely all the way back to Shelagh and Beck's cottage and into their foyer, which seemed considerably warmer than the freezing night outside. Taking a moment to steady my breathing, I threw my jacket on a coat hanger and slipped my shoes off.  
  
"That old hag," Sky said in disgust, examining her arm. "She nearly singed me with her witch fire, Raven would have killed me for ruining her jacket ..."  
  
"No, she wouldn't have," I said calmly. Then I grinned mischievously, my eyes darting to Hunter and back to Sky. "But she might have punished you a little ..."  
  
Hunter gave a disgusted groan. "Oh, that's great. That's just great. There's a dark witch on the loose out there that just tried to kill us all and the two of you are making jokes! I'm calling the council so that at least one of the three of us will be taking this seriously."  
  
I stared at him. "The council? Now?"  
  
"Someone's got to be there," he said. "I have to talk to them as soon as possible about what the next course of action should be."  
  
"Hmmm ..." Sky said, pretending to think. "All in favor of stripping Maggie of her powers?" She raised her own hand as Hunter and I stared at her. She looked back at us innocently. "What? She nearly turned me into a fish stick!"  
  
"Nevertheless," Hunter said sternly with a glare at her, "I need the council's approval."  
  
"Um, with all due respect, Your Seeker-ness, tomorrow is either our last day to save the coven or the day when they will actually be killed," I said seriously. "Other than stripping Maggie of her powers or trying to temporarily bind them, I can't see another way out."  
  
"We should try a binding spell," Sky said quickly, looking to Hunter for approval, who nodded.  
  
"Yes, I think that until I can get in contact with Kennet or someone else in command, that will be a necessary step."  
  
"All right," Sky said, pointing down the hallway that led to the kitchen. "Morgan, the third door on the left is Da's circle room. That's where we can do the binding spell. Hunter, if you get in contact with the council and they tell you to strip Maggie of her powers, wake Ma and Da up so that you don't do anything stupid by yourself." Hunter's ears burned slightly, but he nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.  
  
"Come on," Sky said to me, leading me down the darkened hallway. "And be quiet. Da has magickal alarms on his door that alert him whenever someone tries to gain entry."  
  
When we reached the door that would open to Beck's circle room, I gasped suddenly and took a shocked step back. The door was covered with glowing symbols of hundreds of different colors, symbols depicting the four elements, the eight sabbats, and hundreds of runes and sigils that appeared to be inscribed on the door. When I blinked, though, they all disappeared and it just appeared to be an average wooden door.  
  
Sky was looking at me strangely. "Are you okay?"  
  
"Yeah," I whispered, reaching out to touch the door gently with my fingertips before Sky grabbed my arm away.  
  
"Alarms, remember?" she whispered. She drew a sigil in the air in front of the door and then I reached out to touch it. It felt like it was buzzing slightly under my hand.  
  
"Sorry," I said apologetically. "It's just kind of amazing. I've never really been in a room where magick has been worked for a long time. Like, years. Cal had a kind of secret place where he liked to do magick, but it didn't feel this strongly."  
  
Sky smiled slightly. "Yeah, Da's really powerful. He's been casting spells supposedly since he was two. Or so Grandmum claims, anyway."  
  
I grinned faintly as she pushed open the door to the circle room and we stepped inside. As I looked around the room, my eyes widened in wonder; the walls of the room were indeed circular, but pushed against them were tens of bookshelves and cabinets holding hundreds of different items and magick- making tools, including four entire glass cabinets filled with nothing but differently colored and scented candles, two glass cabinets displaying over twenty styled athames and wands each, bookshelves literally packed with books, some old and some new, and a huge array of other Wiccan objects and tools. In the very center of the room, a circle had been permanently traced into the red carpet with hundreds of chalk tracings piling up over the years, and a plain and yet beautiful altar, a simple circular table with a pentagram engraved on its surface, stood shyly in the middle.  
  
"Wow ..." I breathed.  
  
"You like?" Sky asked, grinning. "Yeah, this place is incredible. Hunter and I used to spend hours in here, just looking at everything." Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. "Well, that and trying to maim each other with the athames, but that's another story."  
  
"Never tell it to me."  
  
"Deal. Anyway, the spell is pretty simple, but really quite effective. It shouldn't take long, providing that nothing goes wrong." I groaned; whenever someone said that, something was DEFINITELY sure to go wrong. It was an unwritten law of the universe or something.  
  
Sky spent about twenty seconds opening cabinet after cabinet and case after case and pulling out a myriad of different objects for the spell, with such precision in knowing what she was looking for that I suspected she really was glad to be back here.  
  
"Ready?" she asked me as she placed an incense stick, a candle, a bowl of salt, and a bowl of water in separate corners of the circle. I nodded and stepped into the chalky ring to sit down opposite from Sky around the tiny pentagram table, on which she had set up a tiny cauldron.  
  
"I'll send you the words to the spell," she said. "They're pretty easy, but useful."  
  
I nodded and fell into a deep meditation pretty much on my own command. I saw Hunter, Sky, Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, Maggie Fisher, and Cràdh, all of them separately, and concentrated on my own breathing, which was now coming slowly and deeply.  
  
"... an di allaigh, an di aigh ..." I whispered softly, beginning my personal power call. "... an di allaigh, an de ne ullah ..." My fingertips tingled. "... an di ulla be nith rah ... cair de na ullah nith rah ..."  
  
By the time Sky and I had both finished calling our powers to us, I was feeling like I was practically ready to implode with the energy that had built up inside of me. Sky lifted her hand and began drawing runes and sigils in the air around us, some that I recognized and some that I did not. Runes for protection and safety, sigils identifying the two of us as well as Maggie Fisher, the subject of our spell. I saw silvery wisps of what looked like smoke hovering in the air, and I realized with a bit of a start that the smoke from the tiny incense stick on the altar was shaping itself into the shapes of the runes that Sky was drawing in the air. Runes for plants and flowers, and then runes for death and chaos. Runes for animals, the creatures of the Goddess, and then runes for death chaos.  
  
Sky started speaking, and I found the words forming in my mind right before she said them. I followed suit, and we fell into a harmony of chanting.  
  
"With the signs of the crimes Of your own designs, We bind your evil Three times three.  
  
We bind you from behind, We bind you from before; That you will hurt our people Never, ever more.  
  
We bind you from the left, We bind you from the right, We bind you by day, And we bind you by night.  
  
We bind you from below, We bind you from above; That you may never know The laws of life and love.  
  
We bind you with your own Good conscience within And so let this magick Unfold and spin."  
  
Suddenly the cauldron on the altar, or whatever was in it, burst into flame and almost sent a spark into my eye. With a quick peek inside, I realized that Sky had already written identical runes for the ones that she had just drawn in the air on little scraps of parchment and placed them inside the cauldron.  
  
Once again, though, I felt her words tugging at my mind and began chanting again.  
  
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy sacred fires And replace them with our hearts' desires!"  
  
I closed my eyes with intense difficulty, as they were glued to the fires of the cauldron, and released all of my energy into the chant as we repeated our mantra twice more.  
  
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy –"  
  
A huge burst of wind cut off my words as I felt myself being thrown out of the circle and falling away. At least, that's what my senses were telling me I was doing. My eyes were shut tight, away from the outside world and stubbornly refusing to open. I was falling through what felt like open air, trying to scream but unable to, my arms trying to move, trying to flail with terror, but unable to move. The ground, the sturdy ground of Uncle Beck's warm, comfortable circle room, was gone and my stomach turned as I tumbled downward.  
  
'Help me!' I screamed inside my mind. 'Goddess, somebody, help me!'  
  
I was screaming, and someone else was, too. I didn't know where I was, what I was feeling, as a torrent of pain suddenly wracked my body; my bones were breaking, my head was bursting with pain as an ear-splitting, inhuman cry forced itself into my mind.  
  
"GET OUT!!!"  
  
I was sitting in Uncle Beck's circle room, still cross-legged across the pentagram table from Sky. Gasping, I nearly fell over and clutched at the ground with both hands, my knuckles white and my eyes wide. Sky looked terrified, as I'm sure I did, her face practically paler than a sheet of paper. She stared at me and I stared back.  
  
"Did you hear her?"  
  
All I could do was nod.  
  
Maggie had managed to block our spell. Somehow, she had forced herself into our minds to deliver one last warning.  
  
"We have to get Hunter."  
  
We ran into Hunter quite literally, who was just coming out of the kitchen when we bumped, or more accurately full on collided, with him in our haste.  
  
"Whoa, what's going on?" he asked, barely managing to stop himself from being pushed over. "Did you bind Maggie's powers?"  
  
"No," Sky said furiously. "She got to us first."  
  
Hunter looked worried. "What do you mean?"  
  
"She blocked our spell somehow," I said, my voice quavering. "She ... it-it didn't work."  
  
"Well ..." Hunter looked grim. "I suppose it's just as well. It wouldn't have been necessary anyway." Off our confused looks, he explicated his previous statement.  
  
"I got in touch with the council. Get Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck. We're going to strip Maggie of her powers." 


	6. Immunity

Disclaimer: Hey again, guys ... we're almost done with this part of the story –gasp– so you have to give feedback as to whether you want the story to continue past England, okay? Thanks a bunch and review, please!!!! :D  
  
Summary: Showdown time ... or maybe not.  
  
PART VI: Immunity  
  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
"I want to go shopping tomorrow."  
  
"Oh, me, too. We should make it a group thing."  
  
"Yes, I could really use a new pair of shoes."  
  
"I saw these really nice ones at Nordstrom's back in Widow's Vale. I'll show them to you when we get back."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
"I got these at a Nordstrom's branch in London a few days ago, but I –"  
  
"Do we really have to talk about this right now? We're on our way to strip a witch of her powers."  
  
"Haven't you learned by now, Giomanach? This is how women adapt to stressful situations. They get things off their mind by talking about shoes and shopping and such."  
  
"Yes, but I don't see why that particular conversation has to be held now."  
  
"Because talking about stripping people of their powers is depressing?"  
  
"That may be true, but that doesn't excuse the shopping conversation. Let's talk about something else."  
  
"... Squirrels don't always remember where they have buried all of their nuts."  
  
It had definitely been a strange night. The above conversation went as follows: Aunt Shelagh, Morgan, Sky, Morgan, Sky, Aunt Shelagh, me, Uncle Beck, me, Morgan, me, and ... Sky's thing with the squirrels. Even though I've known her since I was born, sometimes I still don't get her.  
  
"Oh, look, we're here." The five of us stopped walking in front of Maggie's house.  
  
"Goddess," I muttered under my breath.  
  
Maggie's house was a certainly spectacle to behold; a large fire truck was parked outside and a few firemen were talking to Maggie, who was standing on the walk outside her house and looked remarkably calm for what had just happened about ten minutes earlier. As the five of us hid from view in the next yard over, where the neighbors that had just been observing the fiasco at the Fishers' had turned their lights off again, I noticed that the fire in the hedges was gone, but now they were now blackened and dead.  
  
"Poetic justice?" Aunt Shelagh asked rhetorically.  
  
"Count on it," came a voice from somewhere behind us. The five of us whirled around, caught off-guard, to see a large, middle-aged woman with short brown hair coming up behind us, carrying an athame with an intricate Celtic pattern of knots on its hilt. Shelagh and Beck both relaxed.  
  
"Oh, Breanna, thank you so much for getting here," Beck said, clearly relieved to see the woman, who smiled.  
  
"Oh, are you joking?" she asked, looking curiously over and into the next yard, where Maggie had disappeared back inside her house and the firemen were preparing to vacate. "I always thought it was Maggie, but I didn't wish to say anything in her presence. She's always been adept with working at plants, be it raising them or killing them. Brightendale, you know." Her gaze flicked over to the three of us, who were watching her with open distrust.  
  
"Oh!" Aunt Shelagh said quickly, taking the hint. "Breanna, this is our daughter, Sky, our nephew, Hunter, and their friend, Morgan. They're going to help us with the spell. Kids, this is Breanna Lewis. She's another blood witch in our coven. We wanted her to help with the spell to ensure its power and ..." She paused. "Well, if Maggie tries anything, it'll be nice to have another person here."  
  
I smiled at Breanna, starting to warm up to her friendly exterior a little bit more. "Yes, well, the more the merrier."  
  
She nodded at all of us. "Yes, well, it's very nice to meet you all." She looked a little closer at Sky. "Hmm ... I can see the family resemblance. She has your face, Shelagh." Sky gave her mother a tiny smile, who returned it slightly.  
  
"Is it time?" Morgan asked, her voice shaking somewhat as she looked over into Maggie's yard over her shoulder again. "The firemen are gone, and I don't think she knows that we're here."  
  
Beck looked at me. "So, Giomanach, what's the standard protocol for an impromptu stripping?" He paused. "That did not come out the way that I had meant it to."  
  
I glared at him, and then looked at the others. "Well, generally, we speak with the ... um ... stripee, or the one whose powers will be taken away, and explain the situation and the fact that they will be condemned to live a life without magick by order of the International Council of Witches. If they cooperate, which most do out of shock, then we proceed. If they refuse and attempt to escape, we put binding spells and the like on them to subdue them, and then ..." I hated how primitive this sounded. "... proceed anyway."  
  
I saw Aunt Shelagh's eyes glower slightly. This was one of our disagreement points.  
  
"Well ..." Breanna clapped her hands lightly with an apprehensive look on her face. "Shall we proceed, then?"  
  
"I think that we should speak with her first," Shelagh said quickly. "Perhaps give her the opportunity to resolve this peacefully."  
  
"She kind of destroyed that chance when she pried our heads open and screamed at us," Sky said firmly. I saw Morgan nod fervently in agreement.  
  
"Fortunately, it's not up to you," I told her. "Come on."  
  
With the five of them behind me, I strode up the front walk of Maggie's house and was about to pound on her door when Breanna stopped me.  
  
"Wait," she said quickly. "Let me do this."  
  
With a little sigh of preparation, she readied herself and knocked lightly on the bright red door.  
  
"Conceal yourselves," she hissed with a whisper to the rest of us. With a silent nod that told her we already had, we stepped off the porch and flattened ourselves against the outside wall of the living room. I felt, regrettably, like a secret agent in one of those action movies that Morgan loves so much.  
  
After a moment, I heard the front door open cautiously and Maggie's voice.  
  
"Oh, Breanna, hello. What are you doing here so late?"  
  
"Well, I heard the firemen come past my house, and then I just thought that I had better check to ensure that you were all right. Where's Rupert?"  
  
"He's had to go away to Berlin for a few days. Left this evening."  
  
"Oh, that's unfortunate. So you're all alone here, are you?"  
  
"Unfortunately so."  
  
I sensed that as my cue.  
  
"Well, that's good," I said promptly, stepping out of the shadows and into Maggie's line of vision. "Wouldn't want anything to get in the way tonight."  
  
Maggie's eyes widened proportionally and her face turned a very sallow color with shock. She glared back and forth between Breanna and I.  
  
"You ..."  
  
"Maggie Eleanor Fisher, the International Council of Witches has declared that you are unfit to possess magickal powers or abilities past this night. There are two ways that this may be –"  
  
That was all it took for the door to slam.  
  
"Okay, then. Never mind."  
  
"Come on," Aunt Shelagh said quickly as she, Morgan, Uncle Beck, and Sky hurried over to us. "If I know Maggie, she'll be putting up blocking and protection spells as we speak. We have to move quickly."  
  
"Well, then, let's hurry," I said quietly, and, as per our beforehand plan, the six of us surrounded her house in a sort of siege, each holding an athame. I looked over at Morgan, who was to my right near the back door whereas I was in front of the dining room, and tried to smile encouragingly. I hated this part of my job the most.  
  
As the six of us each began our personal power chants, raising energy within ourselves, I became acutely aware of a strong sense of fear emanating from within the house. Screaming. Agony. Distress. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was Maggie. She was terrified, and I was feeling it. Her cries echoed in my ears louder and louder as I resolutely kept chanting my power call, determined not to let her psychic powers interfere with the job that I was trying to do.  
  
She sounded nearly demonic with terror.  
  
"It won't do you any good!"  
  
I snapped my eyes open and could sense the others doing the same as a head with long gray hair stuck itself out of the window.  
  
"It won't do you any good to strip me of my powers, Seeker," Maggie screamed, her eyes wide and face purple. "It won't do you any good! Do you honestly believe that it's going to stop Cràdh?"  
  
"Cràdh isn't our purpose," I said quietly, and then messaged the others. "Keep going."  
  
Purposefully blocking Maggie's furious wails out of my head, I was about to –  
  
"He's not here!"  
  
My head snapped up once again, as did Morgan's, whose eyes immediately widened.  
  
"What?"  
  
"He's not here! I told you! Cràdh is gone! He's somehow broken through the binding spells ..." Maggie stared around at me, her face growing ever redder. "And it doesn't require much reasoning to discern where he went."  
  
I felt Aunt Shelagh's voice tugging at my mind. "Hunter!"  
  
And now Uncle Beck's. "Hunter!"  
  
"Hunter," Morgan whispered, breaking from her space in the circle to hurry to my side, clutching her athame so tightly that her knuckles were white, but not nearly as pale as her face.  
  
"He's gone to the house."  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
Within seconds, we had abandoned Maggie's house, leaving the distraught witch still screaming her head off inside and sprinting like crazy away from Kingston Drive as if we were being chased by a horde of monsters. I could hardly breathe. Oh, Goddess ... Cràdh ... going to Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's ... where our friends were still sleeping. Our non-witch, and therefore mostly defenseless, friends.  
  
Crap.  
  
My muscles felt so tight that they would snap in half as easily as toothpicks. My lungs were craving the oxygen that I could not provide them with fast enough. The last time that I had run this fast was ... well ... never. Never even during sprints in PE. Robbie. Bree. Raven. And then Cràdh. Going to kill them. When he found a mostly abandoned house with just three helpless teenagers in it, what would he do?  
  
Maybe he would let them live.  
  
Sure, Morgan. Maybe if you tell yourself that, you won't collapse on the spot from anxiety.  
  
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Oh, Goddess, protect them, please. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.  
  
When we reached Shelagh and Beck's street again, my panic eased slightly. Maybe they're fine, I thought. Maybe he didn't really go to their cottage. Maybe we're really in time to help them. Maybe everything is okay, and we're going to storm in there, all ready for action, and realize that Maggie was lying to us and that our friends are all fast asleep in bed without any clue as to what just happened.  
  
Maybe they're fine, I thought. At least, I thought that until I saw the smoke.  
  
Thick clouds of black smoke, thicker and denser than I had ever seen them, were billowing from Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's cabin, which was aglow with flame. Flame. Gold, red, yellow, and bright orange fire was clinging to the walls, the roof, the dead plants around the porch, everything.  
  
There was so much smoke.  
  
"Goddess." Hunter's mouth was wide open with stunned shock, staring at the house where he had grown up as it burned.  
  
I couldn't speak. Oh, Goddess. Robbie .. Bree ... Raven ...  
  
"Where are they?" I demanded, seizing Hunter's arm and shaking it violently. "Are they in there? Are they okay? Have they gotten out?"  
  
"I-I-I can't tell," he stammered, his voice shaking intensely. "Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck have put too many protection spells on it, my magick can't break through ..."  
  
But the fire could.  
  
"Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?" I yelled, tears springing to my eyes, not just from the smoke but from sheer panic. I punched Hunter's arm in panic, my breath coming in short, high-pitched gasps. "Where are they? They have to be okay, they HAVE TO be okay ..." My heart was in my throat. I couldn't see. There was only the fire. And my friends. "Help them! Someone help them!"  
  
I could hear Sky shrieking somewhere to my left. She was fighting her father tooth and nail, who was trying to subdue her, and her eyes were wide and crazed as she stared in horror at the house, trying to break free and rush inside.  
  
"Athar, no!"  
  
"Raven!" she screamed, tears pouring down her cheeks in droves as she tried to wrench herself free of her father's grip, who was using all of his strength to try to restrain her. "Raven!"  
  
Aunt Shelagh was crying softly as she crumpled to the ground and stared up at her beautiful cottage, which the flames were steadily destroying. "Oh, Goddess ... Goddess ... please help ..."  
  
"No ..." I whimpered, clinging to Hunter's arm as if it was my last link to civilization. "No ... no ... no ..."  
  
"Geez. To the common observer, it would appear that you've all gone crazy."  
  
SO not funny.  
  
"Bree!" I all but screamed as I grabbed her and hugged her as tightly as humanly possible. "Ohmigod! If you EVER do that to me again, I swear –"  
  
"Hey, we didn't do anything. You guys are the ones that jumped to conclusions."  
  
Disgusted with her nonchalant grasp of the situation, I released her and instead grabbed Robbie in another bear hug.  
  
"Well, it's nice to know that you care so much about us ... Morgan? Morgan, I can't-I can't breathe ..."  
  
"Sorry. Oh, thank the Goddess you're safe ..."  
  
Robbie just shrugged. "Well, thank Raven's insomnia. We'd probably still be in there if she hadn't seen the fire first."  
  
I shook off shivers at that thought while Raven tried to look modest.  
  
"I went downstairs to see if you guys had come back yet, and the living room was burning down." She looked apologetic. "I didn't see who set it, though, clearly being more worried on escaping alive than –" She broke off abruptly as Sky, with a sort of strangled cry, raced up to us with almost inhuman speed and tackled Raven in such a tight embrace that she nearly knocked both of them to the ground.  
  
Hunter appeared behind us, a grim expression marring his features as he frowned.  
  
"I think that you guys should see this."  
  
Shifting my gaze over Hunter and towards the front of the house, I saw something that made me gasp with shock: Cràdh Fisher, bound, gagged, and on his knees on the front walk. Shelagh and Beck were both standing over him with their hands stretched towards his crumpled form, and I realized with a start that they had him under a binding spell.  
  
"He was around the back," Shelagh said grimly as Hunter, the others, and I approached slowly, Raven, Robbie, and Bree still in their pajamas. "Laughing."  
  
"Damn ... you ... all ..." I heard Cràdh wheeze under his breath at us in the same cold, emotionless voice that I had heard at Maggie's. "Damn ... you all ... to –"  
  
"Oh, shut up," Beck said in disgust and, without further ado, punched Cràdh in the head, effectively knocking him unconscious. At our shocked glances, he just shrugged. "He was irritating me."  
  
"I'm all for renting a room at the inn," Shelagh said, sounding utterly exhausted as the distant horns and alarms of the approaching fire truck grew audible. "Seeing as our house isn't quite fit for such a thing as sleep."  
  
"Here, here," Sky said in the same tired tone.  
  
"Um, excuse me?" Hunter asked in surprise. "Now that we know that everyone is okay, shouldn't we get back to Maggie's and continue with what we were doing?"  
  
Aunt Shelagh gave a funny sort of laugh. I think she was entertained by that. "Oh, please, Giomanach, you don't really expect her to still be there, do you? No, she'll have been gone the moment that we left her property." Seeing Hunter's horrified look, she held up a hand. "Don't worry. I placed a watch sigil on her car. Council members will be catching up with her by dawn, I expect."  
  
"So her car wasn't really broken?"  
  
"It seemed quite fine when I drained the tank of half of its petrol."  
  
"Never mind."  
  
I watched this exchange with slight amusement, but then sighed and rubbed my eyes furiously as the fatigue that the others felt caught up with me. At the moment, I wanted nothing more than to collapse down on a bed and sleep for a month.  
  
I must have unknowingly voiced that thought aloud, because Hunter smiled slightly at me.  
  
"I guess we could," he said thoughtfully. "Now that this thing with Cràdh is finished."  
  
The next few hours passed in a sort of blur. Instead of boring myself to tears with recounting the events over and over again, here is the shortened version: the police got to Shelagh and Beck's within fifteen minutes and arrested the still unconscious Cràdh, Maggie was found and arrested by council officials at a gas station in a small town a few miles north of London, trying to convince the middle-aged and for some reason still single owner of the station that she would use a love spell to get him the most sexually attractive girl in Wales if he would just give her free gasoline, and Hunter, Sky, Raven, Robbie, Bree, Shelagh, Beck, and I crashed at the Greenshackle Tavern, a cozy restaurant and inn outside of town, for the night, all completely and thoroughly exhausted.  
  
He and Shelagh seemed to have taken the news that all of their furniture and their possessions had burned down rather calmly. Hunter guaranteed me later that they were insured for everything, but as to my inquiries about personal family heirlooms and the like, he just gave a mysterious smile and assured me that they were quite well protected.  
  
I think that asked more questions than it answered, but I wasn't about to press the issue.  
  
"So what do we do now?" I asked Hunter while sipping a cup of warm lemon tea that the tavern's caretaker, whom Shelagh and Beck knew personally and was thus being excessively friendly to us, had managed to procure for me.  
  
He paused for a moment. "I think ... we just keep going."  
  
I mulled that over in consideration. The idea had some merit.  
  
A/N: Don't forget to tell us if you want the story to continue past England, okay? We have some ideas, but feedback is important!!!!! REVIEW!!!! (and we'll buy you lots of chocolate and presents and stuff ... hehe) 


	7. The Path to Nowhere

**Disclaimer**: Hi again, people. Part VII is officially now up, and  
VIII should follow shortly. Thanks to all who submitted their opinions  
on the story continuing past England hugs everyone gleefully Don't  
forget to review, and we don't own Sweep. If we did, the cheers would  
be audible around the world, so you would know. pause Oh, yeah, I  
knew I forgot something. The song is "My Last Breath" by Evanescence.  
  
**Summary**: A night at a rave turns deadly for one of the members of the coven.  
  
**Part VII**: The Path to Nowhere  
  
_Hold on to me, love  
You know I can't stay long  
All I wanted to say was I love you  
And I'm not afraid  
Can you hear me ?  
Can you feel me in your arms?  
_  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"I still want to go shopping."  
  
"Oh, drop it."  
  
I just grinned serenely at Hunter while he gave me a semi-affectionate, semi-annoyed look and returned to his oatmeal. Or, as he called it, 'porridge'. How utterly British.  
  
"So what's the plan for today?" Bree asked calmly, taking a sip from her mug. "And can I just say that British people, regardless of their strange affiliation with tea leaves, sure know how to do coffee."  
  
"Coffee is nothing but a poor substitute for tea," Hunter stated matter-of- factly. "It has been scientifically proven that tea provides an admittedly more gradual but overall more effective ... 'boost', for lack of a better term, than coffee does."  
  
I put my hand on his knee gently. "Let it go, Hunter."  
  
"So what are the lot of you up to?" Beck asked pleasantly as he and Aunt Shelagh approached the circle of couches and chairs in the Greenshackle Inn's lobby, where Kithic's six members were haphazardly grouped.  
  
"There's lounging to be done," Sky said with a yawn. "Can't slack off on that now, can we?"  
  
Aunt Shelagh's face brightened slightly. "Oh! If I may suggest, I have a friend from work that owns an abandoned warehouse downtown. He's holding a rave tonight, and even though it's last minute, I may be able to affix six more names to the guest list."  
  
Simultaneously, seven pairs of jaws dropped and fourteen eyes widened in shock.  
  
"Doth my ears deceive me?" Hunter asked in a slightly awed tone of voice.  
  
I couldn't believe it, either. Was Shelagh Eventide, who merely days ago had been screaming her head off at all of us, attempting to make some sort of gesture of peace? Was Shelagh Eventide actually being ... nice to us? Frankly, it didn't seem plausible to me.  
  
But what the heck. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?  
  
Sky was the first of us to recover. "Um ... yes ... I think that sounds ... fairly enjoyable." Raven just nodded her head, still looking sort of stunned, as did Robbie and Bree.  
  
Hunter looked at me with his eyebrows slightly raised, searching for approval, which I gave with a slight nod and smile. This could be fun.  
  
"Yes, Aunt Shelagh," he said finally, still looking at me. Then he looked at her. "I think that we would all enjoy that."  
  
Shelagh nodded slightly, clearly uncomfortable with all of the stares that she was receiving, and looked quickly to her husband, who was still gaping at her in open-mouthed confusion.  
  
"Well, all right, then," she said. "I suppose that I'll call him, then."  
  
With that, she all but fled the scene. A moment of silence was met with Beck's satisfied sigh.  
  
"Well, congratulations, kids," he said with an amused laugh. "I think you finally broke her."  
  
It's weird how these things work out, I thought with a grin as Bree and Sky immediately went in to fashion consultation mode and began discussing the best place nearby to buy new clothes.  
  
"Hey," Hunter said quietly, taking my hand in his. "Are you okay? You spaced out."  
  
"I'm just thinking," I said. "Ready to go back to being my usual wallflower self."  
  
"You're not a wallflower," he said in surprise. I just gave him a wry smile.  
  
"Sure, Hunter. That's easy for you to say, being a guy of incredible hotness."  
  
He just laughed and pulled me up out of the chair by my arm. "And I hope you always feel that way." He paused. "Not the wallflower thing. The hotness thing."  
  
"Sure, Hunter. Whatever."  
  
"... INCREDIBLE hotness, huh?"  
  
I never really knew how long it could take for a day to go by until then. All of us were anxious to go to the rave and finally be able to unwind after having spent the last three days in mortal peril and fearing for the lives of a fair number of people. Now that the situation was under control, thankfully not by us, I knew that everyone was desperate for a chance to relax and have a good time.  
  
And can I just point out now that it is not, I repeat, NOT my fault that I overheard Sky and her parents talking. When they leave the door wide open, someone is bound to hear them! If it hadn't been me, it would have just been someone else. So I hereby release all responsibility and declare that it was NOT my fault.  
  
"Are you sure you're going to this, Athar?"  
  
"Ma, I'm not thirteen anymore. Of course I am."  
  
"... Your friends don't know, do they?"  
  
"About what happened? No. At least, I don't think they do."  
  
"Don't give them an opportunity to find out."  
  
Sarcasm. "Oh, right. Because I really do want them to know about the time that I nearly, due to a stupid mistake, got myself killed."  
  
Okay, time to stop listening! I had clapped my hands to my ears forcibly and strode away from the inn room as fast as I could humanly go, my ears buzzing slightly. Sky had nearly gotten herself killed when she was thirteen? What had happened? Bad thoughts, Morgan, bad thoughts! It's none of my business. It's none of my business. It's none of my ... was it because of magick? Did she do a spell or something that went wrong? No! Stop thinking about that! It's none of my business!  
  
"Morgan?"  
  
With a startled gasp, I whirled around to see Hunter standing behind me, looking confused.  
  
"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned. He touched my arm lightly. "You look sort of pale."  
  
"I'm fine." I groaned inwardly. Sure. Fine. I just heard Sky talking about a near suicide and I was fine. Liar.  
  
At that exact moment, Sky and Aunt Shelagh walked out of the inn room; it took just about all of my internal strength not to run away in the opposite direction out of guilt resulting from my eavesdropping.  
  
"Oh, hey, guys," Sky said, looking surprised to see us. "Hey, Da wants me to stop by the pharmacy to pick up his painkillers for his back on our way to the rave, so can we leave a little early?"  
  
Hunter just shrugged. "Sure."  
  
Sky grinned. "Great. In that case, we'd better start getting ready, Morgan."  
  
I nodded as Hunter looked confused.  
  
"We don't have to leave for two hours."  
  
"... Your point being?"  
  
"No point. I'm pointless."  
  
_Holding my last breath  
Safe inside myself  
Are all my thoughts of you  
Sweet raptured light  
It ends here tonight  
_  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
"Morgan, are you coming out?" I called into the bathroom, where Morgan had been locked for the last hour and a half. "Because, you know, the others are ready to go, and I suspect that they won't hesitate to leave without us if we –"  
  
"Fine, fine, fine." She gave a beleaguered sigh and, unlocking the door, stepped out of the bathroom.  
  
My mouth, for the second time in half as many days, dropped open in shock. Morgan, being the gorgeous angel that she is even if she were covered from head to foot in mud, looked even more amazing than I had ever seen her before. Sky and Bree must have put some effort into her preparation, because I had previously always heard her denouncing those that were concerned only with their physical appearances and therefore let their spiritual, or emotional, processes slip. Now, though, seeing her knee- length red ruffled skirt and matching tank top that miraculously brought out her eyes like I had never seen them before, I was almost certain that I was in the presence of some divine spirit.  
  
If I were Catholic, I would have had her canonized as a saint immediately.  
  
"You-You-You look ..." I stuttered incoherently for several more minutes as Morgan just looked anxiously at me, and after mentally slapping myself, I grinned nervously. "Amazing."  
  
She flushed a deep red, nearly matching the hues of her outfit, and pushed me out of the inn room.  
  
"Come on, Romeo. We've got to go get really drunk and hyped up on psychedelic drugs."  
  
"I would advise against the use of drugs in any case, especially MDMA, for its long-term effects are still being deliberated by the Food and Drug Admini –"  
  
She sighed with frustration. "Hunter, your nerd side is showing."  
  
"Anything you say, Juliet."  
  
"Doofus."  
  
"Geek."  
  
"Prat."  
  
"Did you just say 'prat'? I thought that only we English were allowed to say that."  
  
"I must have picked it up from you."  
  
And so it went on until we reached the lobby.  
  
_I'll miss the winter  
A world of fragile things  
Look for me in the white forest  
Hiding in a hollow tree Come find me  
I know you hear me  
I can taste it in your tears  
_  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Are we all ready, then?" Sky asked, looking up from checking her makeup and making sure that her navy blue strapless dress was wrinkle-free in a portable mirror as Hunter and I walked down the spiral staircase and into the lobby.  
  
"As ready as I'll ever be," I said with a nervous smile as Bree and Raven squabbled over whose turn it was to use Sky's mini-mirror next. "I'll take that, thanks." With that, I quickly snatched the mirror out of Sky's hands and proceeded to scan myself for any errors in preparation while Bree and Raven glared at me and then resumed their battle of rock-paper-scissors.  
  
When Raven and Bree had finally stopped bickering and had both checked their outfits, for Raven a black asymmetrically-hemmed tank top and tight black jeans and for Bree a skintight black halter dress, Hunter finally managed to push all of us out of the door and into Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's car, which Beck had generously agreed to let us use.  
  
"Don't do drugs!" I could hear Aunt Shelagh calling out of her room's window at us as Hunter drove us away.  
  
_Holding my last breath  
Safe inside myself  
Are all my thoughts of you  
Sweet raptured light  
It ends here tonight  
_  
I had never been to a rave before, and now I was starting to understand why I had never held much interest in them. The music was REALLY annoying. Techno. Which is clearly quite popular here in Europe. Even Hunter and Sky had to cover their ears when we first got past the bouncer, to whom Sky had innocently mentioned that she was Shelagh and Beck's daughter. This rave seemed to be something that I was pretty sure my mother would describe as "a hippie love-in from back in the day". Dancing, bars, and flashing lights. And the techno.  
  
Gag.  
  
Bree, Sky, Raven, and Robbie all immediately headed for the dance floor while Hunter and I retired to a table near the back and ordered drinks from one of the wandering bartenders, who appeared to be a little drunk himself. I hesitated when it was my turn to order something, remembering that disastrous night at the Twilite with Killian, but caved. This wasn't New York. This was London, and I was going to take advantage of every opportunity possible.  
  
And can I just make clear the size of the warehouse that the rave was being held in. Huge. I mean, like, super-humongous. Shelagh's friend must have a pretty penny (or pence, but whatever) in his pocket, because I didn't know how anyone could afford upkeep on a place like this, considering that it seemed to be a pretty well-manicured building for a warehouse. The black carpet covering the floor was clean and dirt-free, and the walls were covered with posters depicting different techno European bands in various stages of undress.  
  
Once again, gag.  
  
But just because I wasn't terribly fond of the music ... the pounding, pulsating, would-give-me-a-headache-in-five-minutes music ... didn't mean I wasn't having a good time, and it appeared all of my friends were of the good, too.  
  
"Are most of the people here witches?" I asked Hunter curiously, feeling the same sort of strange buzzing that I had felt at the witch club in New York City and wondering whether this was the blood witch hangout of the London underground.  
  
Hunter shook his head. "Not many ... a few are, obviously, as the guy who owns it is one, but if you're feeling the buzziness, I doubt that it's because of that. It's probably just the music."  
  
I figured that was probably true.  
  
"Hmm. Wanna get something to eat?"  
  
"Sure. I hate dancing to techno."  
  
I gave him a weird look. "I thought you hated dancing of any kind."  
  
He just gave a little cough and returned to sipping his Abbot Ale, which had just arrived at the table along with my Landlord.  
  
Have I mentioned that they give beer really odd names in Britain?  
  
_Closing your eyes to disappear  
You pray your dreams will leave you here  
But still you wake and know the truth  
No one's there  
_  
HUNTER'S P.O.V  
  
I left Morgan in the care of Robbie and Bree, who had returned from the dance floor and joined us at our table due to the ear damages that both had sustained from dancing too close to the DJ, and found Raven and Sky at the bar, immersed in a heavy makeout session that was attracting the open stares of dozens of horny guys on the dance floor, not to mention the bartender.  
  
"Raven?" No response. "Um, Raven? Can I have a word with you?"  
  
As they separated, Sky mock-glared at me and Raven shrugged, looking slightly confused.  
  
"Um, sure."  
  
"What's with you, Hunter?" Sky asked good-naturedly, wrapping a possessive arm around Raven's shoulders. "You trying to steal my girlfriend?"  
  
"Nothing of the sort," I assured her with a sardonic grin. "I just need to talk to her for a moment." I looked my cousin in the eyes. "In private."  
  
"Fine," Sky said with an overly dramatic sigh. "But ..." She pointed at me. "You try to feel her up, I throw witch fire at you."  
  
"Deal," I said as Raven gave a tiny huff, most likely disgruntled that she was being treated like an object.  
  
"I AM standing right here, you know," she said, giving Sky a brief kiss before turning to me. "Speak now or forever hold your peace, Hunter."  
  
"Come over here." I led her over to an empty corner of the warehouse near the back door, pushing a few people clearly high on ecstasy out of my way. Not forcefully, mind.  
  
"So ..." Raven said with an exaggerated sigh. "Is this one of those if-you- hurt-Sky-I'll-kick-your-ass-so-bad-that-you'll-limp-for-the-rest-of-your- human-life sort of talks, because believe me, I already got two of those in detail from Shelagh and Beck."  
  
I smiled in spite of myself. Seeing the two of them together, I highly doubted that that sort of thing would ever happen again. "No. I just ..." This was the harder part. "There was something I needed to inform you of. I was sort of hoping you could ... um ... help me inform Sky of it, as well."  
  
"Do tell."  
  
Okay, Hunter. She would be the first person that I had told. Uncle Beck had asked me in private not to relay the information to anyone else.  
  
"My guardians ... Sky's parents ... are ... um ... they're ..." She raised her eyebrows, and I got to the point in one fell swoop. "AuntShelaghandUncleBeckaregettingdivorced."  
  
Raven's mouth fell open with shock, as I was certain mine had done when I first found out.  
  
"WHAT?"  
  
I gave a grave nod. "Unfortunately, Uncle Beck told me a few days ago. And ... they're afraid to tell Sky."  
  
Raven gave a snort, still staring at me in stunned surprise. "Of course they are! I mean, believe me, I've lived parents getting divorced, and it's not especially a party –"  
  
"No," I said urgently, needing her to understand. "I mean, they're REALLY afraid to tell Sky."  
  
Now she paused. "Why?"  
  
All right. Get a grip, Hunter. It's time to relive one of the most painful moments of my life. I drudged up the memories that I had for so long tried to bury.  
  
"It ... it really started when we were thirteen ..."  
  
SKY'S P.O.V  
  
Oh, Goddess.  
  
"She did WHAT?"  
  
Oh, no. Please don't have told her, Hunter. Please don't have told her ...  
  
"I don't believe you! There's no way she would do that!"  
  
"Take a look at what happened after you two broke up."  
  
He told her.  
  
I can't believe that he told her. He promised me that he would never tell anyone!  
  
WHY THE HELL WOULD HE TELL HER?  
  
"And you think that because Shelagh and Beck are splitting up, it might happen again?"  
  
What? Ma and Da are –  
  
"Yes. Or, at least, that is their concern. The last time that this happened ... well, it tore her up inside, as you know well."  
  
Raven's miserable tone made me involuntarily reach out for her, but I kept my feet planted behind them where they couldn't see me. "I know."  
  
"Divorce is a hard thing to accept for anyone. For me, too. But I'm very worried about how Sky will react when she finds out."  
  
"She won't do what she did before. I trust her." Raven sounded livid. "How long do you expect me to keep it a secret from her?"  
  
I couldn't listen to any more of this. Ma and Da ... Raven ... Hunter ... no ... it's not true, it can't be true. The blood was rushing to my ears and all that I could hear was a dull, pounding roar that destroyed everything. No. it wasn't true. It couldn't be true. Ma and Da were soulmates. I had lived with them for almost my entire life, I was their daughter! They belonged together!  
  
I was just going to ask the two of them if they wanted to go to the club a few blocks away from here with Robbie, Bree, Morgan, and I. And instead my entire life was torn apart.  
  
I needed to get out of here.  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Hey, Sky, what'd they say?"  
  
She didn't answer me and just strode past our table. I noticed the tearstains on her cheeks, as did Bree. Both of us stood up quickly and hurried after her.  
  
"Sky! What happened? What's going on?"  
  
No response.  
  
"Sky!" Bree demanded, struggling to keep up with us in her high-heeled black shoes. "What's going on?"  
  
Sky spun around, and I jumped back instinctively upon seeing the primal fury in her eyes. "Leave me alone!" She turned on her heel without another word and strode away. Bree made to go after her, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her.  
  
"No," I whispered, shaking my head. "I don't know what happened, but she doesn't seem very stable. She probably wouldn't hesitate to barbeque us with her witch fire."  
  
Bree stared at me in disbelief. "She's our friend, Morgan! If you just want to let her go out there, angry and probably a little drunk, then that's your prerogative, but –"  
  
"Hey, where'd Sky go?" Raven and Hunter had appeared behind us, both looking concerned. "She wasn't at the bar where she was before."  
  
"Yeah, she just stormed out of here in a rage," Bree said angrily. "She was crying. What's going on? What happened?"  
  
Hunter and Raven exchanged a terrified look, and my eyes narrowed.  
  
"What were you two talking about? Did she overhear something that you said about her?"  
  
"Goddess, I hope not," Hunter muttered as he and Raven both desperately hurried to the door, past the bouncer, and out of the warehouse without further ado.  
  
"What's going on?" Bree demanded again, her voice growing slightly whiney. "Why won't anyone tell us?"  
  
"Come on," I told her quickly, pulling her back towards our table. "Let's get Robbie and get out of here. I think that the party is over."  
  
_Say goodnight  
Don't be afraid  
Calling me  
Calling me  
As you fade to black  
_  
SKY'S P.O.V  
  
The park was dismally depressing at night. As I sank down onto the bench silently, my mind a blur, I was only vaguely aware of how much I would rather still be at the rave, having a good time with my friends. This was too much; I couldn't handle this much in one night. If I had to see any of them right now ...  
  
"Sky?"  
  
Ask and ye shall receive.  
  
At least it was Raven. I would rather talk to her, understandably, than any of the others. Especially Hunter. Right now, at least. But I didn't want to talk. I wanted to sit here forever and just stare off into space, forgetting everything that had happened tonight.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me." My voice was low. It wasn't a question that I just asked.  
  
Raven looked pained, her eyes tired. "Sky, I'm so sorry, I –"  
  
Suddenly I was on my feet and not caring whether or not I was yelling or whether anyone could hear me. "How could you have kept this from me? I can understand why Hunter wouldn't want to tell me, but you –"  
  
"Sky, I just found out, I swear!" she said quickly, sounding both reassuring and afraid. "Hunter just told me now because he and Beck and Shelagh –"  
  
"And you knew, too!" My voice is rising. I haven't heard a thing that she's said, and I don't care. "Am I the last one to know? Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't they tell me?"  
  
"Sky, listen to me, please!" She grabbed my arms and forced me to look at her. The desperation in her eyes was visible. I used to be able to get lost in her eyes for hours. Now, though, I just wanted to escape and run. "Listen, Sky, I know what you're going through, really. I've been there, too, remember? When my parents split up, I had ..." She paused. "A ... really hard time. An awful time. I SWEAR that I would have told you if I had found out sooner." She touched my cheek lightly, but I pulled back. "I don't want to keep secrets from you if this is what happens."  
  
Wait a minute.  
  
"Can we not do this now?" she said pleadingly. "Can we not ruin tonight for everyone because of –"  
  
My mind was stuck. "But it's all right otherwise?" I said furiously, wrenching my arms away from her.  
  
Raven looked confused. "What?"  
  
"If I don't find out, it's all right to keep secrets from me, isn't it?" I said through gritted teeth, my voice rising. "That's what you just said."  
  
"I didn't say that!"  
  
"But you meant it."  
  
Raven looked irritated now. "Why are you turning this into such a big deal, Sky? I just said –"  
  
"WELL, EXCUSE ME FOR THINKING THAT MY PARENTS' DIVORCE IS A BIG DEAL!" I was yelling now, and I didn't even care.  
  
"That's not what I meant," Raven said emphatically, her eyebrows furrowing slightly. Then a sudden, wide-eyed look swept over her face and her voice was reduced to a whisper. "Is this about Killian?"  
  
Well, if there was one thing that would make this night worse.  
  
"Don't you dare bring him into this," I growled, feeling a primitive burst of anger swell inside me at the mention of his name. That bastard had torn my life apart at the seams. And he had enjoyed doing it.  
  
"I'm not the one who did," Raven said quietly, staring at me with a new intensity. "Not really."  
  
"Why would this be about Killian?" I muttered, barely managing to contain my fury that was bubbling up underneath the surface and about to make me explode.  
  
"Because you couldn't stand what happened with him," Raven whispered. I want to shake her. Why is she so calm about this? Doesn't she understand what this is doing to me? Doesn't she understand that I've been through WAY too much tonight to deal with a share-all about Killian, perhaps my least favorite person in the entire world? "You couldn't stand the fact that I flirted with him and hid secrets from you."  
  
"I know what happened, Raven," I said coldly. "I was there, remember?" I couldn't look at her anymore. "I thought that we had moved past that."  
  
Her voice was quieter than I've ever heard it before. "So did I." She paused and looked at the ground. I could sense that she was feeling bleakly depressed, and suddenly I felt worse. "But apparently, one of us hasn't." She paused again as she struggled to pick her next words. "I know you've ... been through a lot, Sky. I ... I can't imagine most of the things you've been through. If I could ... protect you from everything, I would ... but ... I can't."  
  
She raised her head to look at me as I stared at her in shock. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, and after a moment, slowly turned around and began to walk away.  
  
I wasn't sure how long I stood there. It might have been hours. It might have been just a few minutes. But I knew where I was going when I left the park that night. If everyone was so worried about my reaction, I was going to at least give them something to worry about.  
  
_Say goodnight_  
  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
"Where did she go?" I asked Hunter desperately, whom we had just run into on the crowded street outside of the warehouse.  
  
"What?" he shouted, straining to hear me over the noise that the crowd was making as they tried to get into the rave.  
  
"WHERE DID SHE GO?"  
  
"I don't know. I didn't find her. Maybe Raven did."  
  
"Can't you just send her a witch message and find out where she is?" Bree asked in confusion as Hunter ushered us all into an alleyway behind the warehouse. Robbie squealed girlishly as he almost stepped on a dead rat that had been lying in front of a garbage can, but with a slap on the arm, I silenced him.  
  
"I CAN'T send her a witch message," Hunter said, clearly irritated. "I already tried, believe me! She's been blocking them."  
  
"Well, we have to find her somehow," I said desperately, my heart beating abnormally fast.  
  
"DO YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?" Hunter yelled, frustrated beyond belief; as Robbie, Bree, and I all shrunk back with fear, he sighed angrily and let out an angry bellow of aggravation.  
  
"This is why I wanted to tell her gently," he muttered to himself, his voice shaking with rage.  
  
"Tell her what gently?" Bree asked, confused.  
  
"That Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck are ... they're getting a divorce."  
  
Whoa! What? Back up! Divorce? They're getting a divorce, and Hunter knew, and Hunter didn't tell me?  
  
He held up a hand as all three of us dropped our jaws and widened our eyes in shock. "I know. But now, that's not important. What's important is that we find Sky before she ..." He broke off abruptly. "We have to find her."  
  
"Before what?" Robbie demanded. "Hunter, what's going on? You owe it to us to tell us! If it'll help us save Sky, then we have to know what's going on!"  
  
"You have no idea," Hunter said, his voice sounding choked, as he turned his back to us. "You have no idea what it was like." He spun around to face us accusingly. "You don't know what it was like to almost lose her right after I lost Linden!"  
  
My heart nearly stopped. "Hunter ..."  
  
"No," he said furiously. "You three wanted to know, then you'll know. After Linden died, we were all a mess. Understandably. Aunt Shelagh the most of us all. She had a nervous breakdown one night and started screaming, yelling things at us that no thirteen-year-old should ever have to hear after losing a sibling! Sky was devastated. Even though she was barely a few weeks older than her twelfth birthday, she wanted an escape. She went drinking with an older friend and got hit with a car when someone accidentally knocked into the street. She would have been able to escape under normal circumstances, but she was so smashed that she could barely walk. She broke her leg and nearly all of the bones in her right arm. She would have been killed if she hadn't ..." he broke off with a strangled noise in his throat and looked down.  
  
My mouth was openly wide with stunned incredulity, as were Robbie and Bree's.  
  
"Goddess ..." I whispered, so quietly that I could barely hear myself. "Hunter, I'm so sorry, I had no –"  
  
"It doesn't matter," he muttered quietly, his breath still coming harshly. "What matters now is that we find her before she does something that she'll regret later."  
  
An uncomfortable, seemingly infinite stretch of silence.  
  
"Where do we ... where do we look for her?" Robbie asked, pained. "The rave?"  
  
"No, that's too obvious," Hunter said with a shake of his head. "She'll be somewhere where she doesn't think we can find her. We should check the bar down the street. There are a few in the area."  
  
"Should we split up?" Bree asked with no small amount of hesitation.  
  
Hunter just gave her a small nod. "I think that it would be best. We can cover more ground."  
  
I looked around at all of them, feeling my heart rate spiking again. "All right, then. Let's get going."  
  
_Holding my last breath _

_Don't be afraid  
Safe inside myself _

_Calling me, calling me  
Are all my thoughts of you  
Sweet raptured light  
It ends here tonight_  
  
SKY'S P.O.V  
  
I was glad that I took those psychology classes in high school. I couldn't remember who had first thought of using reverse psychology, but I was pretty grateful to them as I sat down at the warehouse rave's bar and ordered a tray of vodka shots. It was time to forget. Even if for just a little bit, I couldn't deal with this night right now.  
  
First shot. A little buzz. Suddenly, things didn't appear as clear.  
  
Second shot. A stronger buzz. My vision started to blur.  
  
Third ... fourth ... my head hurt ... fifth ... or was it sixth? I couldn't remember ... my head was killing me ... Ma and Da ... divorcing ... fight with Raven ... break up with Raven? Goddess, I hoped not. I wouldn't be able to survive that again ... I tried to clear my thoughts, but the flow of alcohol was clouding me, covering me completely. My head ... I could barely see ... since when had there been two bartenders? My hand found its way to my purse. Hey ... there was something in there ... a bottle ... oh, yeah, Da's painkillers. The ones that I was supposed to bring to him tomorrow. The ones that I was swallowing with another vodka shot now.  
  
Wait a moment, painkillers? Swallowing ... with vodka ... they're not meant for this kind of pain ... maybe they could help this monster headache that I had ... oh, Goddess ... that wasn't a good idea ... now my stomach hurt, too ...  
  
Raven ... Hunter ... where are you? I need you ...

* * *

"Goddess, where is she ..." Hunter muttered under his breath in extreme desperation as Morgan fought through the heavy crowds to keep up with his striding run.

* * *

My hand was shaking so badly that I dropped the bottle ... my head was pounding as if I were being struck repeatedly by a hammer and my stomach was tossing and turning as if it were riding the highest, fastest, and most loopy rollercoaster in the Western Hemisphere ... couldn't breathe ... okay, could breathe again ... barely ... suddenly I was off of the bar stool and almost on the ground. The world was tilting beneath me ... I couldn't see anything but nothing ... it was all nothing ...

* * *

"She can't be far away. I can feel her."  
  
"Is she okay?"  
  
"I don't think so."

* * *

The noises were so loud ... honking, yelling, screaming ... crying ... my head was splitting open ... get out! Get out of my head and leave me alone! This was unbearable ... painkillers didn't do their jobs ... oh, Goddess, and now the smell ... something scurried away in front of my feet, but they were so staggery and I was so blind with pain that I couldn't tell what it was ... I felt a cold brick wall ... I was outside, I was certain ... uncertain ... where am I ... I was just resting against the wall. One minute and then I would get up. Oh ... I was going down ... no, I wanted to go up ... oh, Goddess ... the ground was a lot closer now ... it was cold ...  
  
It was really cold.  
  
_Holding my last breath  
Safe inside myself  
Are all my thoughts of you  
_  
MORGAN'S P.O.V  
  
Hunter saw her first. Collapsed, unconscious, in the alley behind the warehouse. She was covered in dirt and grime from the alley, her face unearthly pale and her whole body covered in sweat.  
  
I'll never forget the look on Hunter's face. Absolute horror. As he ran over to her and got down on his knees, shaking her gently as tears began to escape his eyes, and Robbie and Bree appeared behind me, both out of breath and staring at Sky in stunned silence, my face crumpled and I began to cry.  
  
What had we become?  
  
_Sweet raptured light_

_It ends here tonight  
_

_

* * *

_

  
  
**A/N: Disclaimer in next chapter.**


	8. Waking Moments

**Disclaimer**: As several of you may have already guessed, Part VII was loosely based on the OC episode "The Escape." Am I the only one who pictures Sky as Mischa Barton? Her hair is a little darker than Sky's is supposed to be, but that could be fixed ;). Plus, she's actually English, so that works out pretty well. Anyway, please review! This is coming to a close (next chapter is the last!) so remember to review!!! The song is Alison Krauss's "That Kind of Love". Beautiful song. Go download it or buy her CD, Forget About It.  
  
**PART VIII**: Waking Moments  
  
_Who would sell their soul for love?   
__Or waste one tear on compromise?   
__Should be easy enough   
__To know a heartache in disguise   
__But the heart rules the mind   
__And the going gets rough   
__Pride takes the fall   
__When you find that kind of love_  
  
**HUNTER'S P.O.V**  
  
I had felt intense relief before. Relief and happiness so completely and utterly magickal that I had nearly fainted. One such time was in New York City when Morgan and I escaped alive from Amyranth's clutches. And now, here at St. George's Hospital in London, I almost did faint. Or, at least, I staggered back a few feet before recovering from the shock.  
  
No, Sky didn't die. If she had, I probably would have done a lot worse than fainted. No, she was all right. They had to pump her stomach to get the alcohol and, as we later learned, painkillers out of her system. She was in a recovery room and a drug-induced sleep, but the doctor assured us that she would be all right.  
  
Like I said, relief.  
  
Aunt Shelagh and Raven, both of whom had been pacing the lobby so quickly that I was certain that they were going to leave a ring, burst into tears as Uncle Beck sank down into one of the waiting room's hard plastic chairs and buried his face in his hands with a deep sigh. Robbie, Bree, and Morgan all still looked stunned.  
  
"Oh, thank the Goddess ..." Morgan whispered quietly, to which Bree and Robbie just nodded mutely.  
  
"Thank you, Doctor Rosenberg," I whispered, feeling my throat about to close as tears threatened my eyes. "Thanks."  
  
He just nodded. "She's asleep now, but I think that if one of you wanted to be there when she awakens ..."  
  
Excuse me for the vindictiveness of the next statement, but Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck both knew full well the reason that Sky had gone nearly suicidal. From the looks of depressed resignation on both of their faces, I knew that they were acknowledging internally that the one in Sky's room when she awoke should not be either of them.  
  
But then ...  
  
"Raven, why don't you go see her?" I suggested quietly.  
  
The girl in question's eyes widened. "But don't you want to –"  
  
"I believe that she'd want to see you first," I said, more firmly this time.  
  
Raven looked back and forth between Aunt Shelagh, Uncle Beck, and I, the former of which were staring fixedly at the ground, before nodding slightly.  
  
"She's in room 15B," the doctor said, looking at Raven. "I can show you where it is. The rest of you may, however, wish to go home and get some rest. We'd like to keep Sky here overnight. Standard procedure."  
  
"Why don't you kids go back to the inn?" Aunt Shelagh said quietly to Morgan, Bree, Robbie, and I as Raven and Dr. Rosenberg disappeared down one of the hospital's many white-plastered, boring, and utterly endless corridors. "Beck and I will stay here. We'll call if there's any change or when she wakes up."  
  
"I'm staying," I said immediately, knowing that I wouldn't be able to leave the hospital without feeling a major guilt trip later.  
  
"Me, too," Morgan echoed as Bree and Robbie nodded, as well.  
  
"That's our friend in there," Bree said resolutely. "We're staying for her."  
  
For a moment, I thought that I saw a bit of a twinkle in Aunt Shelagh's eyes, as if she was touched by the devotion that our friends had for Sky and for her safety. Soon, however, she was collapsing into one of the chairs with a fatigued sigh and resting her head against the wall.  
  
"Goddess, I'm exhausted ..."  
  
"We all are," Beck said gently as he sat down next to her. In spite of myself, I felt hope glimmer inside me; was it possible that they wouldn't divorce after all?  
  
... Yeah, right. And maybe cats will learn to fly.  
  
I couldn't believe that I was joking at a time like that. ... I hate myself.  
  
_I can't help feeling like a fool   
__Since I lost that place inside   
__Where my heart knew its way   
__And my soul was ever wise   
__Once innocent was lost   
__There was not faith enough   
__Still my heart held on   
__When it found that kind of love_  
  
**SKY'S P.O.V**  
  
The first thing that I was aware of – dimly, but still – was that my stomach hurt. A lot. My head hurt, too. Come to think of it, pretty much everything was in pain. The light was way too bright, wherever I was. I couldn't really remember. I strained my memory, which just made my head hurt even more. Oh, Goddess ... Ma and Da were divorcing. I had fought with Raven. I had ... what? OVERDOSED ON PAINKILLERS?  
  
Okay ... this was ... strange. After I had nearly killed myself as a teenager, I had promised myself that I would never do something like that again ... and now I had OVERDOSED ON PAINKILLERS?  
  
I must have been pretty damn drunk on vodka shots to have done something like that. Goddess, who am I kidding ... it wasn't the drinking. It was everything else. And my fault. I knew that it was my fault. But acknowledging the truth didn't make the pain any less.  
  
"Hey."  
  
Ooh ... I recognized that voice. Always would. But ...  
  
"Raven? I can't see you." My voice sounded a little scratchy.  
  
She sounded amused now. "Of course you can't, baby. Your eyes are closed."  
  
Ah, yes. Kind of an important factor. It hurt like hell, but after blinking about five hundred times, I could see her. She was somewhat blurry.  
  
"That's better," I said with a smile; seeing her always seemed to bring this completely dopey grin to my face that I couldn't erase no matter how hard I tried, regardless of the situation.  
  
Except, of course, before. But that was different, for lack of a better term.  
  
She looked down at the floor, seemingly finding the patterned tiles immensely interesting. I cleared my throat slightly, which was as sore as it had been when I had gotten my tonsils removed at age ten.  
  
"Are you all right?" Sure. I was the one in the hospital bed and I asked if she was all right.  
  
She just gave an odd laugh and continued to look at the ground. "You're not the one who should have to ask that." She looked at me, and I was startled to see tears in her eyes. I had only seen her cry once or twice before. "God, you could have –"  
  
"I'm all right," I said quickly, sensing that she was about to have an emotional disaster. "Don't try to act like this was your fault, because it wasn't. It was mine."  
  
"But ... if I hadn't brought up ... well, you know who, and if you hadn't heard Hunter and I talking –"  
  
"There was nothing that you could do about that," I said firmly. "And about Killian ..." She winced slightly. "Like you said. You weren't the one to bring it up. Not really. I was being ... as demeaning to my ego this is ... stupid. I get that." I gave a tiny laugh. "After all, look at who's lying in a hospital bed in the middle of who knows where with a massive stomachache."  
  
Raven smiled slightly. "Well, they had to pump it, you know." She looked down for another instant before looking back at me, clearly struggling to choose her next words. "Are you ... why did you do it?"  
  
I didn't answer her for a long time. This was something that I knew everyone would be asking me, and yet I knew that I couldn't give them a reasonable answer. There wasn't one. I had no excuse for what I had done to them, to my girlfriend, and I knew that.  
  
"I ... I didn't want to deal with it," I said quietly. "I wanted to hide and not have to feel anymore."  
  
"You could have talked to me," Raven said softly, her voice barely audible. "I would have listened."  
  
"I know," I said apologetically. "I'm sorry." Now I feel like talking.  
  
"I know that I don't have an excuse for what I did and for what I put you guys through, and I know that I should have been thinking so much more clearly, but things were kind of intense that night what with having just found my childhood home burning to the ground a few days earlier and still having nightmares about that, not to mention –"  
  
"Sky –"  
  
"–the fact that I found out that my cousin hid one of the biggest secrets of my life from me because he didn't trust me with the information, which I sort of understand in retrospect, but then fighting with you was maybe the worst thing of all because the last time that we fought like that you had found me drunk and in bed with Killian, so I was a little upset about that, and –"  
  
"I love you."  
  
"–then I found Da's painkillers and it just seemed like maybe, just for a little bit, they would help get rid of all of the things that I was feeling and couldn't get rid of, but, obviously, that didn't work out very –" Wait. "What?"  
  
She just looked at me serenely. She knew that I had heard what she had said. Suddenly, I found myself unable to breathe.  
  
"You ... did you ..."  
  
She had never said that to me before.  
  
I couldn't seem to form a coherent sentence. "I ..." Or thought.  
  
Words couldn't describe the emotional influx that those three words caused. Just because I responded with stuttered fragments didn't mean that I wasn't feeling the same thing. I hoped that she understood that.  
  
I think that she did ... because with the way that she was kissing me then, I knew that everything would be all right.  
  
_Though beauty is rare enough   
__Still we trust   
__Somehow we'll find it there   
__With no guarantee   
__It seems to me   
__At least it should be fair_  
  
The last person that I had expected to see in my room was my mother. I'm sure that my mouth dropped open with shock when she walked through the door as Julia, a young intern studying for medical school, adjusted the IV drip in my arm. Ma didn't say anything as she sat down in the chair next to my bed and poor Julia all but ran out of the room, sensing the uncomfortable silence that wasn't about to go away anytime soon.  
  
"How are you feeling?" Ma asked after a few moments during which I had been pointedly staring at my hands.  
  
"All right, I suppose," I said quietly. "Sort of hungry."  
  
She smiled slightly. "They won't let you eat anything for a while, huh?"  
  
"They said maybe two days." I shrugged the IV drip. "Hence the liquid Vitamin C."  
  
She didn't seem to find my half-hearted attempt at humor amusing. As a matter of fact, she just looked a little irritated and didn't say anything for what must have been ten minutes, at least.  
  
"I'm not going to comment on ... your less than commendable actions," she said after a while, looking down at the floor, her voice sounding slightly constricted.  
  
My head snapped up in confusion. "Are you ... crying?"  
  
I had never seen my mother cry before. Never. Not even once. Not Shelagh Eventide. She was always too strong for tears. I had seen Uncle Beck cry. I had seen Hunter cry, too, as fervently as he may try to deny it. But never my mother.  
  
She just glared at me through wet eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek, smearing her mascara slightly. "Of course I am." She sounded choked. "My daughter very nearly committed suicide. Do you expect me to be calm? Or not to be bothered?"  
  
Here was my mistake. "Um ..."  
  
Oops. Now she just looked angry as she stood up, sounding furious. "Athar, you listen to me now!" I was taller than my mother, so she wasn't as threatening as she would have been to a shorter person when she was standing up, but when she's in a rage, as she clearly was then, she's a threat to national security. "Just because we haven't been on the best of terms with each other for the past few years and we have not always gotten along every moment of every day, _I am your mother_ and I swear by whatever higher power may exist that nothing, I repeat, _nothing_, that you could possibly do, however stupid, would ever be enough to make me stop loving you!" She was yelling now. "I was wrong in castigating you for turning down the Dublin offer! I realize that! It was your life, and I was trying to take control of it in a way that only you should be able to. I realize that! I know that you wanted to help Giomanach with his job as a Seeker, and I respect your loyalties to him ... to the rest of your friends ..." Her voice trailed off. "They all seem to know you so well. But I ... I feel as if, in the last few years ... I've forgotten who you are." She gave a sort of choked sob, and my eyes widened enormously. "My own daughter ..." She gave a strange sigh as she inhaled deeply. "No ... I haven't forgotten. I've never known." She stared me in the eyes. "I'm ... I'm not opposed to you helping your cousin with his career. I'm not opposed to you pursuing a life separate from your father and I. I'm not opposed to your relationship with Raven. I'm not opposed to anything except the fact that I may have never ... gotten to know you." I was staring at her, too stunned to probably even blink. "If you had died tonight, Athar, I would not have been able to live with myself, knowing that I never took the initiative to understand who you as a person where."  
  
Wow.  
  
That was ...  
  
"Ma ..."  
  
"I'm not asking anything of you," she said quickly, her voice low. "I just ... I want your forgiveness. I want you to promise me that you won't ... hate me for the rest of your life, in summary."  
  
I thought that I was about to cry myself.  
  
"Goddess ..." I whispered, a lump rising in my throat. "Do you think I ever did? Reverting to my five-year-old self ..." I gave her a tiny smile. "You're my mommy."  
  
I'm not sure who started crying first, but I know for a fact that we both spent about a thousand tears in the span of maybe five minutes. Tears for all that we had lost over the last few years.  
  
And maybe hopeful tears for what we could regain in the future.  
  
_But if it's only tears and pain   
__Isn't it still worth the cost?   
__Like some sweet saving grace   
__Or a river we must cross?   
__If we don't understand   
__What this life is made of   
__We learn the truth   
__When we find that kind of love   
__Because when innocence was lost_  
  
I wonder what it holds for all of us.  
  
_There is not faith enough   
__We learn the truth   
__When we find that kind of love_


	9. What's to Come

**Disclaimer**: Thank you so much to all of you that have contributed your  
feedback into making this story a reality [wipes away tears] I'm okay.  
[wink] Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed Back to the  
Beginning, and as a reward for your loyalty, we have decided that the  
story will indeed continue past England. However, there may not be any  
updates for a few weeks because one of the two of us writers has to  
move to Texas (P.S. Sweep fans in Houston, prepare a welcoming party!)  
and might not have access to her computer for a while. Here's the last  
installment of this story for a while, so enjoy and, once again,  
review. Thanx! And the song is Hoobastank's "The Reason."   
  
**Summary**: The gang leaves England.  
  
**Part IX**: What's To Come  
  
_I'm not a perfect person   
There's many things I wish I didn't do   
But I continue learning   
I never meant to do those things to you   
And so I have to say before I go   
That I just want you to know  
_  
**MORGAN'S P.O.V**  
  
Hunter looks depressed. He's been staring out that window for almost an hour, hardly even blinking. Just staring.  
  
"You're going to miss it here, aren't you?" I ask him softly.  
  
He doesn't look at me. "I suppose. Being back here was ... intense and frightening at the same time. I don't know if I can bear to walk away again." He finally looks at me, and I'm struck by the smile on his face that was not there six seconds ago. "But then ... I expect this is what is called 'closure'."  
  
"Yes," I say, nodding enthusiastically. "I mean, think about all the good that this trip did. We stopped a magick abuser and rapist, you and Sky made your peace with Aunt Shelagh, and Uncle Beck made really good bouillabaisse."  
  
Hunter smiles slightly and pulls me into a tight hug. I sigh sadly, knowing that he needs this support.  
  
"Thank you, love. I never could have done this without you here."  
  
"Well, you know," I say, trying to sound modest while grinning. "That's what girlfriends are for."  
  
Hunter's voice sounds more serious. "Hey, speaking of girlfriends ..."  
  
"I talked to Sky," I say, knowing where he is going with that. "She says that she and Raven are okay."  
  
Hunter sighs with relief. "Oh, good." His voice softens. "It takes a lot to drive Sky to near suicide. But ... I think she's going to be okay."  
  
"Yeah ..." I pull back from the hug and look into Hunter's vivid green eyes for a moment before speaking softly. "I think we all are."  
  
"Me, too."  
  
_I've found a reason for me   
To change who I used to be   
A reason to start over new   
And the reason is you_  
  
As Hunter and I trudge down the stairs, both of us lugging our suitcases and backpacks whilst trying not to be crushed by them, Bree and Robbie appear out of the lobby.  
  
"Hey, guys," Bree says, sounding very much unlike her normal, perky self.  
  
I frown at her. "What's wrong?"  
  
"I just don't want to leave here," she moans. "This place is so cool, and that store that Shelagh was talking about really does have the greatest clothes. Bloomingdale's, be damned."  
  
I just grin at her and set my suitcase down near the door. For Bree to be condemning Bloomie's, her beloved friend since she was two, something must be seriously wrong with her.  
  
Raven and Sky are outside with Uncle Beck and Shelagh, as I could see through the open inn door. Sky is laughing at something that Beck said and looks happier than I have seen her in days.  
  
"I think this trip was good for her," Raven says as she reluctantly comes into the lobby a few seconds later and shuts the door behind her. "Self- abuse aside."  
  
Hunter smiles, and I know he is thinking the same thing.  
  
"Yes, but who's to say that Ireland won't be fun?" Robbie asks cheerfully. "I, for one, am ready and willing to partake in the joys of four-leaf clovers, leprechaun-like mischief, potato feasts, and bagpipe concerts!"  
  
"Bagpipes are Scottish."  
  
"Close enough."  
  
_I'm sorry that I hurt you   
It's something I must live with every day   
And all the pain I put you through   
I wish that I could take it all away   
And be the one who catches all your tears   
That's why I need you to hear_  
  
**HUNTER'S P.O.V**  
  
"Hey, Giomanach."  
  
I smile at Uncle Beck as I step outside. Sky grins at me.  
  
"Hunter, please tell me that you're not going out in public dressed like that."  
  
I look down self-consciously at my outfit, comprised of a pair of khaki pants and a polo shirt. Sky laughs.  
  
"You're too easy."  
  
I just look at her and choose to ignore that last comment. "Are you ready to go?"  
  
She exchanges a quick glance with Aunt Shelagh. "Um, yes, I think so. Just let me grab my suitcase."  
  
As she goes inside the inn, leaving me alone with Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck, I sigh and look around the country that I had spent many years in, taking in everything.  
  
"I'm really going to miss it here," I say, my voice sounding detached even to myself.  
  
"Well ... what are you going to do about it?" Uncle Beck says with a small smile. "Move on. Live. That's all we've ever wanted for you ... Hunter."  
  
I smile at him, feeling tears threatening my eyes. Idiot, I scold myself. Don't cry in front of them. Better yet, don't cry at all.  
  
Aunt Shelagh, however, isn't having as much luck containing her emotions. She looks about ready to start crying at any moment. "I'm ... I'm glad that you came back, Giomanach." She adds a sardonic twist, as per her style. "Besides, chances are no other council members would have even thought of Maggie as the guilty party."  
  
I'm pretty sure that my amazement shows in my eyes. After a moment, Uncle Beck steps forward and gives me a hug, which I gladly return.  
  
"Come back and visit again, you hear?" he asks, sounding choked up himself. "I'll give you all a ring when I get to Oxford."  
  
"You'd better," I say firmly as we separate. "Otherwise, we just may have to pay you a visit to ensure that you're still alive."  
  
"Yes, that would be terrible, wouldn't it?" Aunt Shelagh says as I hug her, too. She pauses for a moment before speaking again. "Call when you get to Ireland, all right? Let us know that you're fine?"  
  
"We will," I promise. "Don't worry."  
  
As we separate, I see the fear in her eyes. Fear for us.  
  
"I mean it, Aunt Shelagh," I say, more forcefully this time. "Don't worry about us. We can take care of ourselves now." I smile. "We learned from the best."  
  
She grins again as Sky pushes the door open, startling us, and lifts her suitcase down with a fatigued sigh.  
  
"One would think that there would be a spell or something to make this thing lighter," she says to herself.  
  
"Oh, there is," I say. "It's called only packing what you need."  
  
"Funny. You're funny."  
  
_I've found a reason for me   
To change who I used to be   
A reason to start over new   
And the reason is you   
And the reason is you   
And the reason is you   
And the reason is you_  
  
Five of us are sitting in the rental car, with Raven, Robbie, Bree, and Morgan once again squished into the back with all of the luggage. I'm sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for Sky to finish saying goodbye to her parents.  
  
She wipes a tear away as she gets into the passenger seat next to me and shuts the door.  
  
"Are you okay?" I ask her quietly.  
  
"... Yeah," she says after a long moment. "... I think I'm ready to go to Ireland."  
  
"Well ..." I turn the keys in the ignition. "Then, let's go."  
  
_I'm not a perfect person   
I never meant to do those things to you   
And so I have to say before I go   
That I just want you to know_  
  
_I've found a reason for me   
To change who I used to be   
A reason to start over new   
And the reason is you_  
  
**MORGAN'S P.O.V  
**  
We left the inn about two hours ago. For a little bit, conversation was kept up, but then it dwindled as everyone retreated into their own heads. Now it's quiet, with no sounds except the occasional whiz of a motorcycle outside or the mooing of some farmer's cow.  
  
We're going to Ireland. That decision was made by Hunter and Sky last night. Of course, they wanted to get my opinion considering that we would be going to the town nearest the ruins of Ballynigel, but did they honestly think that I would disagree?  
  
I'm really proud of both of them. They faced their fears and went back to their beginnings.  
  
Now it's my turn.  
  
_I've found a reason to show   
A side of me you didn't know   
A reason for all that I do_

_

* * *

And the reason is you_

* * *

****

**THE END ... FOR NOW**


	10. Negative Space

**Disclaimer**: Hi, guys! We're back with a few more weeks to spare! Well,  
the gang has moved onto Ireland right now to face more danger and  
adventures (although they obviously don't know that, or they wouldn't  
go). Hehe ... read and review, pleeeease? We may think of giving one of  
our loyal reviewers a cameo in the future ... [wink] And passages in { }  
indicate dreams, visions, etc. Anyway, Hunter's reference to killer  
roaches comes from the X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages".  
  
**Summary**: The coven arrives in Ireland and immediately begin to doubt  
the safety of their new vacation spot.  
  
**Part X**: Negative Space  
  
_{"Morgan ..."}  
  
{A flash of light. A burst of something red. Blood. The moon was full. Knives sharpening. Growling ... screeching ... and screaming.}  
  
{"Morgan! Stop!"}  
  
{Binding her ... her wrists were sore ... her head was battered and overloaded with thoughts ... sacrifice ... blood ...}  
  
{"You can't stop this!"}  
  
{"They're all going to die unless you let me do this."}  
  
{My friends ... my lover ... my destiny was this, I was certain ... I needed to do this ... why was he stopping me?}  
  
{"NO!!!"}  
  
{Stabbed. Crumpling to the ground. Hurting ... it hurt so much ...}  
  
{Bleeding ... why did I have to do this? I wouldn't let them destroy me along with my coven.}  
_  
**MORGAN'S P.O.V**  
  
My eyes snapped open with impossible speed as my heart skipped a beat and I was jolted back to consciousness. My arms felt numb, and I twisted my neck around quickly, thus inadvertently assuring that I would not be able to bend it for several weeks in the future. I didn't know where I was.  
  
"Morgan? Are you all right?"  
  
Hunter was looking at me, concerned, from his seat next to me; his magazine still open in his lap, he put his hand to my forehead.  
  
"You don't look well," he said, worry starting to dawn in his voice. "Are you okay?"  
  
I just stared at him, my eyes wide. The dream was still vivid in my memory.  
  
"Yeah," I said shakily after a moment, giving my head a slight shake and forcing myself back into reality. "I'm okay. Just ... a bad dream."  
  
I looked around at my friends in the small airplane that we were flying over St. George's Channel in. Robbie was asleep, Bree was looking at a clothing catalogue and clearly struggling to stay awake, and Raven and Sky, who were sitting behind Hunter and I, were giggling over an old photo album that Sky had borrowed from her parents.  
  
"Hey, Morgan, take a look at this one," Sky said, trying not to laugh as she handed me a worn photograph that depicted, upon closer inspection, a six-year-old Hunter, clad in a little Batman outfit complete with hood and cape, being chased by a huge bulldog. "Remember that one, Hunter?"  
  
"Give me that!" Hunter demanded in disgust as I tried to stifle a snort of laughter and ended up nearly choking on air.  
  
"What happened?" I asked. "Or do I not want to know?"  
  
"Hunter was parading around in front of the dog singing the Batman Song," Sky replied, still watching Hunter with a teasing look. "Remember the song? How did it go again ..." She thought to herself for a moment. "Um ... I'm the mighty, mighty Batman ... fighting –"  
  
"I'm the might, mighty Batman / Fighting crime in Gotham City / Strongest in the Woodbane clan / Won't you come and fly with me?" Hunter said in one quick breath and then proceeded to put on his headphones and drown himself in elevator music as Raven, Sky, and I all but exploded with laughter.  
  
When we hadn't stopped five minutes later, Hunter just gave us an annoyed look. "All right, that's enough laughter at my expense. Didn't Sky ever tell you about the time that she swallowed an open safety pin?"  
  
Sky stopped laughing rather quickly.  
  
"I was three," she muttered, and then sulked back in her chair.  
  
"Four."  
  
"Liar."  
  
I had always enjoyed listening to Hunter and Sky's meaningless banter. It almost helped me get my mind off of that dream.  
  
Almost.  
  
**PORTRUSH, IRELAND**  
  
Ireland was beautiful.  
  
It may be redundant to say that, but it was the only thought on my mind as the six of us walked through Portrush, Ireland, which was a medium-sized town a few miles south of the North Channel. Dragging our luggage behind us, we couldn't concentrate fully on the town, but what I saw of it was incredible. The buildings of tiny Portrush were constructed from faded red brick with small, single-pane wooden windows built into the second and third-story floor's walls; the street scene was exactly what I would have expected from an Irish town with a produce market selling tomatoes, beans, squash, carrots, lettuce, a fish market that was, unfortunately, smelling up the whole street, and a gray, rough cobblestone street. Townspeople were talking in mixes of languages, ranging from English to what I recognized as Irish Gaelic.  
  
"Come on," Hunter said as Bree and Sky both stopped to coo over an adorable terrier puppy that was walking with its owner, who just so happened to be a quite visually pleasing man in his early twenties. As Raven glowered at the man, who was openly ogling Sky, and Robbie sent a glare in his direction that, in an alternate universe, would have paralyzed him from the arms down, Hunter stopped walking and looked up to see a creaking, old, peeling sign hanging from the green-and-white striped awning over a wooden door.  
  
"This is it."  
  
We all looked up at the building that we had stopped in front of; the walls were wooden, unlike many of the other buildings in this section of the town, and painted green. A sign above the awning read, in old-fashioned Celtic lettering, _The Candle Lodge_.  
  
"This is where we're staying?" Raven asked, her eyebrows slightly raised.  
  
"An old friend of mine runs the place," Hunter said. "I met him while I was investigating a series of deaths related to killer cockroaches." At all of our stares, he just shook his head. "Please don't ask."  
  
Like any of us wanted to.  
  
The lodge's exterior belied its appearance on the interior, however; if any of us had been thinking that staying at the Candle Lodge would be a form of torture that one could complain to at Amnesty International, we were sorely mistaken. The warm tones of the wooden walls and wafting scents of incense and candles instantly created a heavy, pleasant atmosphere, and there was a lingering aroma of flowers in the air. The lobby of the lodge itself was striking, or at least more beautiful than the interior of a Marriott; green velvet-upholstered couches and orange chaisonals were arranged in a semi- circle around the large wooden fireplace, in which burned a crackling fire that cast a soft glow on the furniture.  
  
"So where is this friend of yours?" Sky asked, clearly noticing, as I had, that the place was empty.  
  
"Oh, he, um ..." Hunter seemed a little uncomfortable. "He had to leave town for a week or so, and I convinced him to allow us to care for the lodge for a few days."  
  
"Does that mean we'll have to deal with guests and stuff?" Bree asked, looking discontented at that prospect.  
  
"Oh, no," Hunter said quickly. "No, the lodge is closed for the week. As far as everyone else is concerned, there aren't any vacancies left."  
  
"And you managed to convince him to leave through logic and reasoning, I assume?" Sky asked pointedly. "Hopefully in a non-magickal way?"  
  
"Council member right here. I don't abuse magick, remember?" He paused. "Although I may have done a little chant or something to open his mind to the possibility of a vacation."  
  
Sky sighed.  
  
"So ... we all have our own rooms here, right?" I asked quickly. "I mean, there are a ton of empty ones, right?"  
  
"Right," Hunter said, glad for a change of topic. "Yes, the keys are all behind the desk here ..." He hurried over behind the check-in counter and pulled three sets of keys off of the key rack, then looked back at all of us. "So how do you guys want to split it up?"  
  
We just looked at him.  
  
"Ah, yes," he said after a moment, obviously embarrassed. "The obvious way."  
  
**LATER**  
  
While this lodge was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and comforting places that I had ever visited in my entire life, I couldn't shake a few of the doubts that I was feeling concerning the town of Portrush that I had felt ever since we had arrived. I couldn't explain them, either, but they felt like ... something was off. Something about this quaint, quiet, old little town was off. Wrong somehow. Something didn't feel right.  
  
I wasn't about to ruin my friends' happiness, though. Hunter and Sky had opted to stay behind and explore the interior of the inn building, but Raven, Bree, and Robbie had headed out into the town to do 'the tourist thing', as Bree had put it. Sky was clearly glad to be out of England despite the fact that she had made her peace with her parents. Maybe being back there was, overall, just too emotionally destabilizing.  
  
Feigning a headache, I had retired to the lodge room that Hunter and I would be sharing and flopped down on the bed, burdened with an intense lassitude. I couldn't even bring myself to kick off my shoes. Feeling great relief when my eyes actually closed, I made a firm resolution to take a quick fifteen-minute nap and then help Hunter and Sky investigate the rest of the building. Suddenly, though, that didn't seem as plausible ...  
  
_{Flying ... no, not flying ... falling ... falling ...}  
  
{"Morgan! Morgan, wake up! Morgan, please wake up!" Panic ... fear ... he was calling her, but she couldn't reach him. The black was so overpowering. She knew that the blood was spilling, but she couldn't stop it. She couldn't even open her eyes ...}  
  
{Someone help me ...}  
  
{Morgan ...}  
  
{Morgan ...}  
  
{Morgan!}  
_  
"Morgan!" Someone was shaking me.  
  
For the second time in the same day, my eyes snapped open and poor Sky barely avoided the witch fire that I had accidentally hurled at her.  
  
"Oh, my God!" I cried, suddenly wide awake. "I'm so sorry, Sky! You just scared me, I didn't mean to, I –"  
  
"Just get up, lazy," she said with a small smile, clearly trying not to laugh at my babbling apologies. "We have to help Hunter."  
  
"I know," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I was about to, but –"  
  
"No, I mean, we need to help him right now."  
  
My eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Oh, it's nothing terribly serious. We were just peering around the basement of this fine establishment when Hunter foolishly decided to test a loose floorboard, fell down through the floor, and found himself trapped in a pit dug into the earth."  
  
The horror that Sky's statement should have instilled in me was surprisingly absent and I found myself wanting to laugh. Something like that could only happen to Hunter.  
  
"As long as he's okay ..."  
  
"Oh, he's fine. I just can't find a way to get him out."  
  
With a sigh, I sat up and pulled my flip-flops on from where they had fallen off of my feet. "I guess we should help him, then."  
  
"I suspected as much."  
  
The rest of the lodge, as I soon learned, was not in quite as good shape as both my room and the lobby. Paint was peeling, water was dripping from a loose pipe in the dining room, in which most of the tables were covered with dusty sheets, and the kitchen was in a state of complete disarray, what with dozens and dozens of old, rusty dishes and pots with food permanently dried to their sides and a tablecloth home to so many wine and vomit stains that I nearly puked upon seeing it myself. It was in this dilapidated and disheveled room that the door to the basement could be found. Sky hesitated to open it and just stood looking at it for a moment.  
  
"Are we ... going to rescue Hunter soon?" I asked hesitantly.  
  
"It's, um ... it's kind of dark in there," she admitted. "And the light switch is at the bottom of the stairs."  
  
I paused after I realized what could have been a stunning epiphany concerning my fellow coven-mate. "Are you afraid of the dark?"  
  
"No," Sky said quickly. "But one never knows what could be down there. Haven't you ever seen any of those horror movies where someone walks down the basement stairs and it's all dark and then they're attacked by a –"  
  
"I can't believe this," I said in awe, my mind spinning as my face split into an uncontrollable grin. "Sky Eventide is afraid of the dark."  
  
"No, I'm not!"  
  
"Yes, you are!" Hunter yelled from somewhere down in the basement.  
  
"_Do you want us to rescue you or not_?"  
  
"Sky, you've been afraid of the dark ever since you were four and I stole your Mickey Mouse nightlight. Now get down here and take a look at this!"  
  
With an agitated growl, during which I just smiled serenely, Sky stalked down the basement steps and flipped on the light switch at the base of the staircase.  
  
"There! See? I am _not_ afraid of the dark!"  
  
"That's beside the point." Hunter's voice was echoing, as I could see as I stepped down onto the dirt floor of the basement, from a deep pit that was, true to Sky's word, dug straight into the earth. The two of us leaned over the edge and were greeted with the sight of the top of Hunter's head.  
  
"Goddess, that thing is deep," I said, amazed.  
  
"Yes, around eight feet or so," Sky said with a sigh. "Short of levitating him up, I can't see a way to get him out. This place is completely devoid of rope or –"  
  
"What about that step ladder sitting next to those cans of artichoke hearts?"  
  
"What ladder next to the articho – oh."  
  
"Thank you, _Morgan_," Hunter said pointedly a moment later as he climbed out of the earthen holding pen that he was previously imprisoned in. Sky just glared at him.  
  
"What should I be taking a look at?"  
  
"This." Hunter held out his hand, in which he was holding ... a human skull?  
  
"Is that –"  
  
"A human skull? Yes. It was lodged in the wall of the pit along with dozens of other heads, as well as other human bones," Hunter said, sounding apprehensive. "It's very old. It practically fell apart when I tried to pry it out; I had to use the makeup brush that Sky asked me to hold for her while she poked around the kitchen."  
  
Sky gave an outraged yelp and grabbed the makeup brush that I was certain would never be usable again from Hunter's hands as I took the skull from Hunter's hands. Shivering slightly with the knowledge that I was holding an actual piece of the human skeletal system, I held it up to eye level and examined it closely. It was cracked and stained with a brown substance that I sincerely hoped was dried dirt and not dried blood.  
  
"Hey ... Morgan, Hunter, come see this."  
  
Sky had wandered over to the huge shelves bearing rolls of toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and, for some reason, the artichoke hearts that were previously mentioned. She had somehow shoved one of the shelves aside and was now examining the wood that provided the foundation of the building.  
  
"Hunter, when was this building established?"  
  
"I believe that it was built in 1854."  
  
Sky sounded incredulous. "That's not possible. There's a brick foundation around the basement that is much older than that. I'd say ..." She looked up with a calculating expression for a moment. "Um ... maybe about three hundred or four hundred years old." She grinned suddenly. "Too bad you don't have your pee-wee science kit with you, Hunter."  
  
Hunter gave an fuming and strangely effeminate squeal. "That's not even – that was from first grade."  
  
"Fifth."  
  
"Open safety pin."  
  
"Okay, can we please examine the brick foundation now?" I asked irritably, for once getting tired of their sibling-like tiffs. "We have other more important issues at hand."  
  
"I don't know what this friend of yours has been telling you, Hunter, but this building is definitely older than 150 years old. Most likely around four hundred. It must have been rebuilt after a fire or something of the sort, because these bricks are charred. And ... is this friend of yours a witch?"  
  
Hunter now looked a little worried. "I-I don't think so."  
  
"Well, then, someone who lived here previously clearly was. There are runes carved into the bricks."  
  
"What?" Hunter and I were immediately by her side, examining the bricks of the lodge's foundation. Sure enough, hundreds of tiny runes and sigils were carved into the bricks, runes for death, chaos, famine, disease, and hate.  
  
"A dark coven used to live here," Sky whispered. "And ..." She looked a little closer at a small cluster of sigils and ran her hand over them lightly. "These spell out 'power source'."  
  
Hunter's face had grown ashen. "No wonder I felt such power from this place," he whispered. "It's built on a power sink."  
  
"Is it safe to stay here?" I asked, unable to avoid the tremble in my voice.  
  
"I'd wager that it is," Sky said. "Runes for protection are here, as well, but maybe we should ..." She paused. "consider finding another place to stay?"  
  
"We have nowhere else here," Hunter said firmly. "This is the only lodge in town and most likely the only one for quite some distance."  
  
"Whatever happened to that famous Irish hospitality?" I asked, a semi- mocking tone evident in my voice. "Seriously, though, Hunter, I think that it'll probably be okay. I mean, as long as it's not a dark magick power sink ..."  
  
"No power sinks have an affinity for dark magick, Morgan," Hunter said. "Magick is neutral, remember? It's what people make of it that determines its ... we should be safe. I would, however, like to perhaps call for a few council members specialized to detect traces of dark magick."  
  
Sky nodded, and as she and Hunter began to climb up the basement stairs back to the safety of the main floor, I stayed behind, still staring at the runes.  
  
It was no wonder that my dream not twenty minutes ago had been so much more vivid than the one on the airplane. I was over a power sink, the like of which were known to always bolster and strengthen acts of magick or otherwise. I knew that, without a doubt but with much apprehension, that I would be experiencing more visions of what I had just seen. Visions of spilling blood, visions of death and destruction ... visions of my friends dying.  
  
Visions of the future? 


	11. Dragon in Paradise

**Disclaimer**: Ahhh ... new chapter ... finally! I missed writing this story _so _much! I hadn't had a chance to access this file on my other computer because the hard drive is unresponsive to the keyboard ... long story. Anyway, please review and remember that this story _does_, in fact, exist and has not been abandoned. You guys know what to do, so give me feedback and I'll keep writing! BTW, this chapter is kind of long (7500 words! Ack! It took forever to write ... but then, what with living in a new house that is completely unfurnished, using the computer is the only thing to do. Literally). I recommend reading it in two installments. BTW, the song is Jem's "Maybe I'm Amazed".

**Summary**: Sky's ex-boyfriend arrives in Ireland and causes an argument between her and Raven.

**Part XI**: Dragon in Paradise

* * *

_**Jealousy is the dragon in paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of the emotions because associated with the sweetest.**_

_**-A.R. Orage**_

* * *

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

I would be lying if I said that I was not having an incredible time in Ireland with my friends. True, I hadn't managed to get our discoveries in the basement of the inn out of my head and I was still worrying in the back of my mind about the repercussions of living in a place that a dark coven had both lived in and practiced dark magick in, but as Hunter and I strolled down a forest path about a mile out of Portrush, our hands interlocked and marveling at the beauty of the river that was less than fifteen feet from us, those less than happy thoughts were far from my mind.

"It's so beautiful here," I said quietly, afraid that speaking too loudly might disrupt the calmness and serenity of the scene before us. I couldn't help but think that returning to New York would be disappointing, scenery-wise, after having spent a few weeks in Ireland. "I don't get how Maeve could have ever left."

"Evil black force summoned by pissed off witch coming to kill everyone?" Hunter suggested, a rare note of humor in his voice.

He _did_ have a point.

"Well, I suppose, but still ..." I fingered a bright green tree leaf; it felt fuzzy like a peach, and I was sadly reminded that boring old pine trees were pretty much the only trees in the backyard of my house. I pouted slightly. "Do we have to go back to New York? We could just stay here and plunge into denial that the outside world even exists."

Hunter just smiled. "As nice as that sounds, we do have lives."

"Well, maybe some of you do," I sighed. Looking out over the distance of the water, I picked something up out of the corner of my eye that made me look back again. I smiled. "Hey, look over there."

I had noticed the outlines of two people on the other side of the river, distinguishable by the completely opposite hair colors that the two occupied: black and very light blonde. I had assumed, and according to my witch senses was correct, that Raven and Sky had an idea very similar to Hunter and mine: take a walk along the river on a gorgeous summer day. Though it was barely noticeable, I felt the traces of their words floating along on a stream of magick:

"I've never seen anything so beautiful." Raven was admiring the river, into which flowed a little stream by where they were walking.

Sky's voice was softer. "Neither have I." It was quite obvious that she was speaking not about the river, but about her companion.

"I guess they've recovered from England," Hunter said with an indulgent smile.

"Thankfully," I added, after a moment proceeding down the forest path with Hunter at my side, enjoying the comfortable silence.

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

I had not felt nearly as relaxed as I had when walking down the path in the forest with Morgan in a very long time, most notably since we had arrived in Europe to begin with. I was basking in the silence, as my life had been quite busy for the past few weeks, only to have it broken when Morgan insisted on making me question her sanity.

"I wish that I could fly."

I wondered whether my expression was more amused or pitying. "A common desire among mankind, as I understand it."

She suddenly sounded defensive. "Oh, come on. Like you never wished you could fly."

"I prefer to think that I have always been more grounded in reality than in a world of fantasy," I said with a purposeful air of refinement and great finesse.

"Says the witch," Morgan said in a teasing tone. "But it's okay for you to parade around in front of a huge dog wearing a Batman costume, isn't it now? And to refuse to acknowledge someone speaking to you unless they addressed you as 'Hunter the Great'?"

I can't believe that ... "That's not even –" I cried, my voice unwillingly high-pitched. I sighed when Morgan laughed triumphantly. "I'll get Sky for this ..."

"Oh, please don't," Morgan said earnestly. "It's quite fun learning embarrassing childhood stories about you."

Suddenly seeing a plan for revenge, I grinned devilishly. "Oh, I'm sure that it is, but you just wait until I start pumping Bree and Robbie for information about you."

Morgan's eyes widened proportionally. "You wouldn't."

"Try me," I said in all seriousness. I was feeling quite proud of myself for coming up with such an ingenious plan of revenge when a voice that spoke from behind us, regrettably, made me jump from surprise.

"Hunter Niall?"

Goddess, I hate it when people do that. I turned around, prepared to be sarcastic and indignant with whoever had just spoken my name out of the blue, when I was greeted by the friendly, warm face of a woman that I happily recognized.

"Brighde?"

"The very same," she smiled. I couldn't help but grin broadly; one thing that I loved about traveling was that it ensured that I would always meet up with old friends again.

"Wow, this is amazing," I said. "It's so great to see you again! How is everything going?" I was thinking about her coven, Moonrise, which had previously had trouble of the dark magick variety with over half of its members. I had done my duty as a Seeker and aided Brighde's calls to the council for help when the members of Moonrise who did not practice dark magick began to receive threats and warnings concerning their well-being and that of their families.

"Wonderfully, thanks to you," the old woman said with a proud smile. Her eyes glanced over at Morgan. "And who might this be?"

Trust Brighde to be interested enough in talking to you to ask about your friends. "Oh, Brighde, this is my girlfriend Morgan. Morgan, this is Brighde Lachlan. She's with the council office here in Portrush."

Morgan looked surprised. "There's an office in Portrush?"

Brighde nodded. "Oh, yes. It's that building over there." She motioned a large three-story brick building in the middle of the main road. It was quite conspicuous against the landscape, and Morgan looked slightly embarrassed.

"Oh, yeah ... I've seen that place," she said, clearly trying to sound casual.

"Am I correct in assuming that we may expect both you and Athar at the briefing this afternoon?" Brighde asked, speaking to me.

"Absolutely."

"What briefing?" Morgan asked, looking between the two of us in confusion.

"It's a meeting with Kennet Muir, my mentor. He flew in this morning to meet with Sky and I about something."

"What does he want to talk about?"

"I have no idea," I said honestly.

"He's being very secretive," said Brighde with a smile. "You know, I do believe that our annual town music festival is on Thursday at the square. Why don't the both of you attend? It's open to the public."

Ooh, this was news. I had heard many good things about Portrush's annual music festivals. Welsh and Irish musicians usually traveled from wherever they were touring abroad to attend and play. Chances were, the Fianna would be performing. I knew that Morgan would jump at the chance to see them again.

"Sounds fun," Morgan said enthusiastically.

"Sure," I said with a smile. "Count us in."

Brighde, bless her heart, looked confused at the speech that teenagers today used. "Pardon?"

"We'll be there."

My good mood disappeared soon after, however; Sky, in my opinion, could not have picked a worse day to get caught up in the wonderful world of romance. I had headed back to the inn, changed into a suit and tie, returned to the council building for our meeting with Kennet, and still found my cousin noticeably absent. As I sat in Kennet's office room, he pacing around the room in frustration and I watching in amusement, I couldn't help but stifle a snort of laughter.

"I'm very sorry, Kennet," I said apologetically, attempting to turn my laugh into a cough. "I don't know what's keeping her." _Yeah, right_, I thought.

"Well, she had best arrive soon," Kennet said irritably. "Not everyone here is as patient as I am."

That was news to me. "You're patient?"

Kennet just sent a death glare towards me. "Funny," he said, clearly thinking that I was not funny at all. "That's funny. However, the supervisor of the defensive magick department may not think so."

"I'm sure that she'll be here soon," I said seriously. "She's probably just lost track of time."

However, then, as if on cue, Sky hurried in through the open office door, looking very flustered.

"Kennet, I am _so _sorry I'm late, I just lost track of time ..."

Score one for Hunter.

Kennet just ushered her outside into the hall again, this time with me included. "Of course, of course. Now if we can _please _get to the meeting ..."

He hurried past us in the hallway, walking very quickly. I heard him mutter underneath his breath, "_Kids _... no respect for timetables, none at all ..."

I was too amused at my cousin's state to be offended by that. "You have a leaf in your hair," I muttered in a low voice, then laughed and followed Kennet as Sky looked horrified and desperately began searching her hair for the invasive leaf.

Kennet was correct in assuming that the other members of the council would not be as forgiving of our late arrival; several nasty glares later, we sat down at the long table in one of the council's multiple conference rooms and proceeded, much to my great boredom, to fall victim to one of Kennet's long-winded lectures.

Lectures aren't all that bad. He just uses way too many statistics. It makes it kind of boring.

"As I'm sure that most of you are aware of, dark magick abuse has been on the rise in not only Ireland, but parts of England and Scotland, as well," he began bluntly. "According to Omduil O'Connor in statistics, a twenty percent rise in England and Scotland and thirty-two percent rise in Ireland is occurring as we speak." Sky and I exchanged curious looks, neither of us able to remember a time when the numbers of dark magick cases had increased so rapidly. "We have been unable to find a precedence for such an increase in abuse, and that is why you have all been called here today."

"What is the department of dark magick control planning to do about this, Mr. Muir?" a council member in the back spoke up.

"We've started summoning Seekers from several other posts around the world and removing them from their tasks to arrive here. However, rest assured that those that arrive were stationed where they were for security reasons and not because of heavy dark magick abuse in their respective areas. We must be cautious about upsetting the balance of Seekers in the world."

With a gesture, he yielded the floor to a man who I assumed was the supervisor of the defensive magick department. Everyone else's attention switched over from Kennet to him, but Sky and I leaned in to talk to Kennet at the end of the table as he sat back down.

"Kennet, you know that I can't ..." I began quietly.

"Relax, Hunter," he said. "We're not asking you to come back to work. You deserve a vacation after that case in England. We're just asking that you ..." He gave a deep sigh. "maybe ... keep your eyes open?"

Huh. The council's definition of 'keeping one's eyes open' is definitely different from the literal meaning of the expression. However, as I couldn't see a way to get out of having to at least follow Kennet's instructions, I nodded.

"All right."

Everyone in the conference room jumped slightly as a message over the public announcement system suddenly sounded very loudly.

"Attention, please," came a woman's cool, calm voice. "If Sky Eventide is in the building, would she please come to the front offices and check in at the desks? Once again, if Sky Eventide is in the building, would she please check in at the front desks? Thank you."

Kennet and I both looked at Sky in surprise, who looked equally confused.

"I guess that I'd ... better go check in at the desks?" she suggested uncertainly.

I nodded. "Yes, you'd better." She was about to leave when I called out to her. "If they don't let you out before I leave, I'll message you."

Sky nodded and left the conference room, still with a slightly confused look on her face. I turned my gaze to Kennet.

"What's this about?"

"I have no idea. They most likely just need her to wear a visitor's pass."

**SKY'S P.O.V**

I've never been paged on a public announcement system before.

It's kind of cool. That's all I have to say.

"Um, the announcement said that I was supposed to check in here," I said to the witch behind the main check-in desk. I started pulling out my purse. "Do I need a visitor's pass, because I have identifi –"

"Actually, I asked her to make the announcement," came a voice from behind me.

I jumped slightly and whirled around. What I saw was shocking. Or rather, who I saw. I'm fairly certain that my brain almost shut down from shock at seeing the familiar sandy hair and blue eyes of ...

"Oh, my God ..."

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

I couldn't help but wonder why Sky had been called down to the front desks, but more pressing matters were occupying my mind at the moment. Kennet's revelation about the increase in dark magick abuse was intriguing and yet frightening at the same time. I had sensed his disappointment when I had said that I would not come back to work and attempted to ameliorate the situation.

"What can I do to help, Kennet?" I asked. "I don't want to give up a vacation, but I'm not going to shirk my duties as a Seeker. I want to help."

"I know that you do, Giomanach, but ..." He sighed in frustration. "I just don't know what to do anymore. We've never had so many cases in our inbox before. Things are going to get ugly ... fast."

Clearly, this did nothing to alleviate my worries.

**SKY'S P.O.V**

I could just see the deer-in-the-headlights expression that I probably had on my face at that very moment.

"Ryan?" I whispered. I cringed internally; my voice sounded completely stunned.

He smiled. Goddess, why did he have to smile? Why?! Out of all the things he could have done, why did he have to smile? He always had a gorgeous smile, I remembered it from years ago. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts ...

"Well, it's nice to know you recognized me."

Huh. Like I could ever forget you. "Like I could ever forget you."

Wonderful. Just wonderful. Then suddenly we were hugging ... he smelled really good ... Goddess, what the hell was I thinking?

I still sounded shocked when we separated. "What-What-What are you doing here?"

"Um, work."

Oh, yes. And the embarrassment kicked in. "Oh, that's right. You work for the council." I laughed slightly. "Yes, Sky has memory problems. She's not proud of them."

"But you remembered me," Ryan said with another of his blindingly white smiles (those damn things). "So call it an upside."

"Ryan, how did you know that I was –" I began, but he interrupted me.

"Well, I was posted in Mexico City until Kennet called me back here. I heard that you were here with Hunter, so I just thought that I'd ... come and pay you a visit."

Oh. Kennet will pay for this, yes, he will. "Um, don't think that I'm not glad to see you or anything, but ..." Goddess, I'm such a coward. "I-I really have to go." I was close to backing towards the door when his eyebrows furrowed slightly. Great. I've hurt his feelings.

"Well, wait. Um ... would it be okay if I invited you out to lunch tomorrow, or would I just be making a complete fool of myself?" He looked so nervous that I felt turning him down would be like a stab in the back. Literally. But ... this couldn't be a good thing, it just couldn't be ... it could only end in disaster, just like things had before.

"Um ..." I sighed internally. "Okay." A nod. "Okay. Tomorrow."

And then I ran. Well, not literally, but I sure got out of there as fast as was humanly possible. This wasn't good, I was getting a headache, and I had just ... made a date with my ex-boyfriend? Nope, it wasn't a date. Couldn't be a date. I'm already seeing someone. Ryan sure wanted it to be a date, but ...

Hunter, I'm going back to the lodge. -

His reply was almost instant.

Why? –

Expertly avoiding the question, all that I answered with was 'see you later'.

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

The day had dulled extremely quickly after Hunter and I arrived back at the lodge and he had run off again to the council building for his briefing with Kennet. Sky arrived back earlier than Hunter, looking very distracted and turning down my and Bree's offer of a cookie dough sample from where we were preparing oatmeal cookies in the kitchen. Hunter had not arrived back by the time that we had made risotto from scratch for dinner (it didn't turn out too well, but I digress). In fact, the rest of us, getting tired of waiting for him, had retired to the abandoned lobby, plopped down in front of the miniature TV that Hunter had managed to get working a few days earlier, and immersed ourselves in a very old episode of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?'. For some reason, it was showing on BBC.

From his position next to Bree on the loveseat, Robbie, with an air of incredulity in his voice, commented on the actions of the current just-made millionaire, a sixty-year-old man with three PhD's (in history, Greek literature, and physics, respectively).

"What a doofus."

Bree looked at him with her eyebrows raised. "Robbie, the guy's a Harvard graduate who just won two million dollars."

"Well, yeah, but if he hadn't used 'ask the audience' on the second to last question ..." He sighed in disgust. "I mean, how can you _not _know that Marge and Homer's only son is Bart?"

Sky spoke up from where she and Raven were curled up on the couch. "Well, he did know everything else. Including that one about how many neutrons are in an element of Francium."

Raven looked at her skeptically. "But you knew that one, too."

Sky shrugged modestly. "I took AP Biochemistry. It was a question on the midterm."

Hunter chose this moment to make his entry; he walked in through the front door of the lodge, his face weary, looking exhausted and very irritated.

"Sky," he said firmly. She didn't look at him, but nodded to let him know that she was listening. "Can I have a word with you?"

"Too comfortable. Not moving," was her reply.

Hunter glared daggers at her, his last reserves of calm clearly breaking. "All right, then," he said angrily. "How about you explain to me what Ryan McGowan is doing in Ireland?"

Sky twisted her neck around to stare at him so quickly that I was surprised it didn't snap. "Oh, yes, that ..." Her voice had lowered very quickly.

"He says that he saw you this afternoon," Hunter said, his eyebrows furrowing. "Is that why you ran out in such a hurry?"

Raven gave voice to what Robbie, Bree, she, and I were all clearly thinking. "Who's Ryan McGowan?"

Sky looked highly uncomfortable. "Um, he's ..." She was clearly trying to sound casual. "He's just a friend. We're just friends." Her voice was slightly too high to be completely believable. Coupled with Hunter's snort, we all saw through that lie.

"Yeah, friends with benefits," he had muttered slightly under his breath. Unfortunately for Sky, everyone heard him. She glowered at him, obviously unable to believe that he had just said that. Meanwhile, an uncomfortable look had appeared on Raven's face as well.

"Oh," she said softly. "Ex-boyfriend. Right."

Sky was now on the defensive. "He works for the council. I just saw him for the first time today in two years, I swear."

Raven just held up a hand. "It's not my place to ask. I get that."

"You're really okay?" Sky asked, surprised.

Raven was clearly not telling the truth. "Yeah." She paused. "Yeah ..."

The rest of us were silent, perhaps worried that saying anything might upset the scene before us further.

"Hey," Sky said quietly, forcing Raven to look at her. "I'm not interested in him anymore. I promise."

She leaned in to kiss Raven's forehead, but Raven, having a different idea, leaned up so that their lips made contact instead. Robbie blushed and Bree grinned, but none of us looked away. When the two broke apart, Hunter, from his position behind my chair, smiled.

"Well, now that that's settled, who wants some of the ginger cake that I picked up from the bakery last night?"

Ooh, dessert! "Me!" I cried, unfortunately sounding quite like a five-year-old.

"Yes, please," Bree said primly, setting the pillows on the loveseat in the correct places again before standing up.

"Abso-positive-lutely!" Robbie said enthusiastically. He paused slightly as everyone in the room turned to look at him strangely. "Let's be clear here: that was a _manly _abso-positive-lutely."

As Robbie, Bree, and I followed Hunter into the kitchen, I couldn't help but look back at the living room, where Raven and Sky hadn't gotten off the couch yet. As Sky mouthed 'I love you' to Raven and Raven back to her, I couldn't help but feel that something was amiss. Whether Sky was willing to see it or not, Raven still didn't look completely happy with the situation at hand.

**SKY'S P.O.V**

Laughing with Ryan over lunch felt so familiar and comforting the next day that my mind was far from the less than comfortable lobby conversation with Raven last night. I was having lunch with a friend. What was wrong with that? Of course, if she were here, she would say that I was over-rationalizing the situation. Supposedly, I do that a lot when I'm worried.

However, Café Portrush had a really good mixed seafood salad. I wasn't about to let anything spoil that. Even Ryan's description of a five-legged, rabies-infected Doberman-Rottweiler mix wasn't enough to take away the experience of the best salad in the entire western world.

Nearly choking on a shrimp, I exclaimed, "That's disgusting ... and unfortunate for the dog. What did it look like?"

He just shrugged. "Well, if I didn't hate dogs beforehand ..."

Hmm. "And this was _after _the invisibility spell gone awry?"

"Yep."

"Wow ..." Things had certainly gotten interesting around the council since Hunter and I had gone off on our own adventures to Widow's Vale. "I'm gone for just a few years ..."

He grinned suddenly. "I think I forgot to mention the magickally mutated chickens."

Showoff. "See, now I know you're just trying to make me jealous."

We both grinned, enjoying the comfortable, pointedly friend-like banter, as I ate another forkful of the salad straight from heaven.

"So ..." Ryan asked suddenly, leaning forward. "Is the lovely and beautiful Sky Eventide currently dating anyone?"

If I hadn't stopped chewing so abruptly, I probably would have needed to have someone well-versed in the Heimlich Maneuver close by. "Um ..." was my ingenious response. This question was unexpected.

"Because ..." He looked worried and refused to meet my gaze. "The reason that I tried to find you was ... um ..." He looked up. "I want another chance with you."

Oh, Goddess.

In retrospect, I knew that I'd probably wish that I had a camera with me. I'm sure that the expression on my face was hilarious.

He spoke quickly, clearly thinking that the look on my face could not mean that my love of the idea was great. "I know that, when we broke up two years ago, we said we'd give each other space. I was just wondering if now ... we might be able to have what we had back then?"

It's suddenly rather difficult to breathe.

"Ryan ..."

"Hey, no pressure," he said quickly, holding up his hands. "It was just a ... just a general wondering."

Internally, my inherent babble-mode somehow switched on. "I just ... I-I don't know if ... I don't know if I can ... this is a lot to ask, Ryan, and –"

"I know," he said hurriedly, obviously sensing my transition into babble-mode. "I know, I just ..." He looked me in the eyes, and I had to look away. They're way too blue for such close contact. "I want you, Sky. I always have. I just need to know if you still feel the same way."

I looked away, finding the menu hanging in Café Portrush's window extremely interesting. "Ryan ..."

No, this isn't fair! Why does this have to happen now? Why now, of all times? Why couldn't this have happened last year, earlier? When I went to Widow's Vale with Hunter, I was still hurting over my breakup with Ryan. That's not to say that Raven was a rebound, but she helped me get over him. And I was over him, I really was, but now ... why now?

My answer to him was a lot less rant-y. "I don't know if I could do that again, Ryan. Because ... getting over you was one of the most difficult things that I've ever had to do in my entire life." He just looked at me solemnly. "I don't know, Ryan. I just don't know."

After a long moment that seemed like a painful eternity, Ryan nodded slightly and looked down at his untouched soup and salad.

"You already paid, right?" he asked quietly.

I nodded. "Yes. You?"

He nodded. After a moment, reaching a silent agreement, we both got up and left the café.

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

I could have really used Sky's help that afternoon, and I still wasn't over the internal anger that I was harboring towards Ryan McGowan for stealing her away for the afternoon. All that I had to say was that Sky had better hope Raven didn't find out she had gone out to lunch with him.

A vendetta against my cousin, however, quickly dispersed itself as Kennet and I stepped into the ruins of a dilapidated house in the old town of Ballynigel, keen on exploring it for ... knowledge geek purposes. When I said dilapidated, I meant dilapidated: all four walls of each room of the five-roomed, single-level house were in various states of disrepair, the roof, which I could tell due to shingles lying on the ground had once been made from very nice orange tiles, was missing completely, the floors were split and grass was growing tall in between the cracks, and all signs of human life had been erased by the thick layers of dust and plaster powder that covered everything.

True, it wasn't the most fun way to spend an afternoon, but it'd do.

"For what purpose are we here, again?" I asked Kennet as we climbed over a section of the wall that was missing into the ruins of what was once apparently a kitchen; the only indication that food had once been prepared in it was a rusty sink sitting alone on a cracked, broken counter.

"I've been told to investigate this house for signs of magick use in the past few weeks," Kennet replied, examining the rusty sink with great interest. I didn't know exactly why a tarnished kitchen appliance was so intriguing to him, but I had long since learned to stop questioning his actions and take them in stride.

"What happened here?" I asked, curiosity rising within me.

"Dark wave from a few decades ago," my investigative partner said as he kicked the three-legged table, which had clearly lost a leg and was leaning against the wall pitifully. "This was one of the houses destroyed in the night that Ballynigel fell."

For some reason, that didn't sound right to me, but I couldn't pinpoint the reason why. "What? Are you sure?" Wait. I could almost remember seeing something recently ... but what was it? "Kennet? What house is this?"

He consulted a small note card that he pulled out his pocket, on which he had messily scribbled the house name and number. "Um ... 14 Ingalls Road."

Oh ... "Well, wait ..." I began to fumble in my jacket pocket, searching for what I hoped would explain the strange feeling that I had about this house. "This isn't a dark wave home."

That came out so suddenly and without warning that I was surprised that I had said it; however, somehow, I knew that it was right.

Kennet looked at me in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, this home wasn't destroyed by the dark wave," I said, finally finding what I was looking for: a small local newsletter from a few weeks ago that I had picked up from the brochure rack in the council office. I flipped through it, through housing advertisements, someone's ad for their missing dog, and an announcement for the town music festival. Finally, on the last page, I found a small article no longer than 200 words. Skimming through it, I realized that my suspicions were correct.

"Kennet," I said, "this newsletter says that this home was mysteriously destroyed several weeks ago. No one knows how or by whom. All of the people living here, an elderly couple and their three grandchildren, were killed ... according to their autopsies, by ..." I wrinkled my nose in disgust. "one single stab wound to the heart."

Kennet did not look fazed by this information. "They must have told me the wrong address, I suppose. I expect that ..." Suddenly his voice broke off.

I raised my eyebrows. "You expect that ...?" I asked leadingly.

His attention had been diverted to the far wall of the kitchen. "Hey ..." He kneeled down in front of it and began to rub the plaster powder away.

"What are you doing?"

"They're runes."

Intrigued, I leaned down next to him to examine what, true to his word, turned out to be runes etched into the wall with, I assumed, a sharp rock or knife.

"Mannaz ..." I whispered, recognizing the M-shaped rune. "othel ..." Wait ... there were more ... They were letter runes. "gebu ..." This couldn't be right. "Neid." I looked up at Kennet in shock. "Kennet ... they spell 'Morgan'."

All that Kennet could do was look back at me in stunned disbelief.

Nothing happened later in the day to allay my worries concerning that dilapidated house's ruins in the broken town of Ballynigel. As Kennet and I stepped into the lodge, both deeply lost in thought, I burst out suddenly:

"I just don't understand what her name was doing there!"

"Maybe we were wrong, Giomanach," Kennet said smoothly. "Maybe it was another alphabet, another rune set. It most likely does not refer to her, in any case."

Of course. Of course. If it was Kennet's girlfriend that was being questioned, I knew he would be as worried as I was. "Oh, please! Who _else _could it refer to?"

"Oh, I don't know," Kennet said sarcastically. "Perhaps another of the millions of girls in the world named Morgan?" His tone softened slightly as I just cast him a desperate, worried look. "All I'm saying, Giomanach, is not to get too worried about this. Of course, it's a little strange, but I'll take it up with the council and see what we can discover, all right?" He grinned slightly. "I'm sure that it will all turn out well in the end.

"I really don't believe you," I said simply.

His small grin grew into a full-fledged smile. "Of course you do. You're just reluctant to admit that I'm right." He stopped suddenly and looked around the empty lobby, confused. "Where's Athar?"

I sighed in frustration. "Oh, that's quite another thing. If she weren't so busy concerning herself with Ryan McGowan, perhaps she'd have been able to help us at the –"

"Ryan McGowan?" Kennet interrupted, looking surprised. "She's ..." Ah, the epiphany. "Oh, Goddess ..."

"Yes!" I cried, glad that he had finally realized his mistake. "Yes, and apparently, you're the one that told him to come to Ireland!"

"Well, Hunter, we're short on employees with the international situation growing steadily worse!" he said, his voice rising. "What other choice did I have?"

"Oh, gee, let's think ..." I said, my voice growing in scorn. "How about the one that keeps my cousin's ex-boyfriend as far away from her as possible?"

"It's not as if he's a bad man," Kennet said, going for reason. "Although ... I must admit that I'm surprised that she's allowing herself to be around him, considering how difficult it was for her to recover from ..." He sighed, and I knew that he was reliving the events of over two years ago in his head, as well. "well ... their failed relationship."

"Yes, she was a wreck," I admitted. "I just ... I don't want her to be around him anymore. She's moved on, she's seeing someone else ... I don't want her to have to relive the past where he's concerned."

At that moment, I realized that I had an internal craving for that ginger cake from the bakery, which had tasted absolutely divine last night. I started to head for the kitchen, and Kennet followed me.

"Well, hopefully she won't allow herself to fall in love with him again," he said with a concerned but thoughtful expression. "We both know what sort of disasters would arise from that situation."

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

Bree and I had nearly left the inn and were standing right in front of the front door when we saw Raven stand up from the couch in the lobby. From the door, it was completely impossible to tell that she had been sitting there.

"Oh, hey, Raven!" Bree said, surprised to see her there.

Raven didn't say anything, just looked at us and then away.

"We were thinking of going into town for something to eat. Up for it?" I asked cheerfully. "There's an Italian eatery on Eastmire Road that supposedly has the world's greatest breadsticks. They've won awards and stuff."

My thoroughly convincing speech didn't seem to help her make up her mind as to whether or not she wished to go with us. She was still staring off into space as she had been when we first spotted her. Bree and I exchanged quizzical looks.

"Um ... are you okay?" I asked tentatively. "You look like you just swallowed an entire bottle of horse liniment." Bree gave me a weird look, and I purposely buried that embarrassing memory of Mary K at my grandparents' ranch in Arizona. "Um, long story."

"Really, I'm fine," Raven said, her voice slightly heavy. "I just want to be alone for a while."

This excuse did nothing to stop Bree, who just shook her head, grabbed Raven's shoulders, wheeled her around, and marched her towards the door.

"Nonsense," she said matter-of-factly. There's nothing that ice cream can't cure, and there's a private parlor next to the eatery."

"It'll do you good," I said reassuringly.

Raven still looked apprehensive. "Do I have a choice?" she asked reluctantly.

"No," Bree and I both said at the same moment.

Raven sighed in resignation. "Fine. Lead the way."

Victory ... such a sweet experience.

However, as the three of us walked down a main street of Portrush, talking and occasionally examining items for sale in antique shop windows, and Raven shared with us what she had overheard Kennet and Hunter saying, I could somehow understand her position. I knew that Hunter had been in relationships before we had gotten together, and I knew that he was with me now, but that didn't mean that I'd be willing to listen to someone else recounting the tragic ways that they ended and about how much in love he was with his past lover.

"Don't be so upset about it," Bree said comfortingly. "Sky has had relationships with guys before, yes, but now she's with you."

"Yeah," I agreed, still eating my small vanilla ice cream cone. Ice cream was surely the food of the gods. "She might have been in love with Ryan at one point, but I doubt that she still is. She loves you now."

Raven was still looking miserable. "I don't know about that."

"It's true," Bree said simply as the river came into view around the corner of a rug importer. "What you need, Raven, is self-confidence." Raven raised her eyebrows at that, but didn't comment. "You need to believe that Sky loves you for who you are and stop being so insecure all the time. If you don't, you're going to drive yourself crazy."

"She's right," I said, finding it easier to just agree with Bree, the resident romance expert, than try to come up with my own ideas, which would probably be shot down by the said resident romance expert anyway. "Do you love her?"

Raven looked stricken. "How can you even ask that? Of course I do."

By now, we had reached the railing separating the riverbank from the street leading out of the town. Bree leaned on it and looked out over the water. "Then you, in turn, need to accept the fact that ..." Suddenly, her voice grew much quieter. "That ... she ..." Even without seeing her face, I could tell that her eyes had widened enormously. She sounded shocked. "Oh ... oh, my God ..."

"What?" Raven and I both asked.

Bree, looking quite desperate now, began to pull Raven away from the railing and back towards the street.

"You know what I think would be fun?" she asked, her voice unnaturally high. "We should go back to the lodge and –"

My curiosity and unwillingness to be left out of the loop came to the surface. "Bree, what are you talking about?" I looked out over the water myself, scanning the surface and looking towards the small island in the middle. "What did you –"

Oh, crap.

I saw what she had seen.

"Oh, God ..." I whispered as Bree cast me a desperate look.

Raven was now looking between the two of us, slightly unnerved. "What's going on?"

She followed my gaze, which was regrettably still pointed towards the wooden bridge that connected the mainland with the island in the middle of the river. She froze almost instantly.

Very, _very _unfortunately for all five involved in the situation, and especially for the speech that Bree and I had just given Raven, we had looked to the bridge to see none other than Sky and a guy, who I immediately assumed must be the Ryan McGowan that Raven had told us about, kissing on the bridge.

So much for our lecture.

Bree and I both heard a small, whimpered "no ..." and instantly whirled around. Raven's eyes were wide with horror, and she backed away slowly in disbelief.

"Raven –" Bree said quickly as the girl in question's eyes started to fill with tears.

_Oh, no_, I thought. "Raven, wait!" I called after her as she quickly turned and ran away down the street, disappearing around the corner, the echo of her crying reaching Bree and I back at the bridge.

We stared after her for a moment, then at each other, and then back to the bridge, both still trying to process what had just happened.

**SKY'S P.O.V**

Goddess, it felt so familiar. It was something I hadn't felt in ages. I used to want it so much, but now ...

Pulling away from that kiss was difficult, but I was surprised to feel relieved when I did. "Ryan, I ..." I could hardly breathe. "I ... I can't do this."

He looked towards the ground with a deep sigh, and I spoke quickly, desperate to undue the damage. "I ... you asked me if I was seeing someone, and the truth is ... I am. And I don't want to cheat." My flip-flops suddenly looked quite interesting. "I've been through enough of that as it is."

I chanced a look at Ryan, who was still silent and refusing to meet my eyes. However, after a moment, he looked back at me. The pain in his gaze was almost unbearable to see.

"Do you ..." He sighed. "Do you love Raven?"

My answer was instant. "Yes." Wait, did he just ask if I loved Raven? "But wait, how do you ..." This was strange. "You asked me earlier if –"

"I talked to Hunter," he said quietly. Oh. Then it was my turn to feel embarrassed. "Before, I wanted to see if you would be honest with me about it."

"Oh." Sometimes, I have such a way with words that I could just kill myself. "Ryan, I ... I love her." It hurt to look at him, but I did. "I-I can't explain it, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to leave her."

After a minute that seemed to take an eternity to pass, he nodded slightly. I took in very little of the next part of the conversation, but basically what I understood was that Kennet had offered him a position at the council office in Scotland. If I wanted him to, he'd take it. I did want him to take it. It seemed selfish at first, but considering it, I knew that it would be best for both of us. Best for his career, and best for my mental state.

I realized then that I would probably never see him again. He was letting me make my choice, and I had. I hadn't chosen him.

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

Bree and I found Sky trying to open her and Raven's lodge room door with very little luck, as it was locked from the inside. Sensing that she was about two seconds away from unlocking it magickally, I decided it best to intervene.

"She doesn't want to see you right now."

Sky jumped slightly, having been too distracted with the mysteriously locked door to sense us approaching, and looked slightly confused.

"Okay, what's going on here? Why doesn't she want to see me?"

Before I could stop her, Bree burst out accusingly, "Ryan. Bridge. Making out. Ring a bell?"

I, as inconspicuously as I could, stomped on Bree's foot as icy cold realization flooded Sky's face. She turned, if possible, even paler than her normal complexion would allow.

"Oh, God, no, that-that wasn't –"

"Save it," Bree said coldly. "If you're choosing your ex-boyfriend over her, at least be honest about it and stop leading her on."

Now Sky looked indignant. "I never –"She sighed. "I'm not getting back together with Ryan. He started it, I ended it. He's going to Scotland."

Bree and I exchanged glances. Why was it that the situation was always black or white enough that a little bit of gray couldn't sneak in?

"I don't want him, I swear," Sky said desperately. "I want Raven, not him. Can't I see her and explain?"

"We can't make her come out," Bree said plainly.

Sky's insistent calls through the wooden door clearly did not move Raven enough for her to wish to see Sky at the moment, and even Sky's innumerable apologies and declarations of love did not seem to be enough.

"Why don't you give her some time, Sky?" I asked softly.

Sky gave a little noise in her throat between a whine and a tearful cry and gave a slight nod before looking back at the door sadly.

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

The strange sight of Sky lying on the couch in the lobby on her side, looking very depressed, greeted me as I walked into the main room of the lodge from the kitchen, sorting a few envelopes that I had gotten from the council's main office in London. I looked at her perplexedly, turning my head to the side slightly.

"What are you doing?"

She sighed deeply. "Oh, thinking about how much I just screwed my life up."

That didn't explain things very clearly. "What do you mean?"

She sighed again. "Raven saw me kissing Ryan and –"

What the – "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait!" I held up my hands in shock. "You were doing _what_? You were kissing _Ryan_? _Ryan_?"

"Did I stutter?" she asked shortly.

Hmm. That was a new development ... and quite a disturbing one at that. "Wow ..." I reached my formal decision. "You suck."

She whined. "I know, I know!" She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her head on the fluffy green couch pillow. "And now she's never going to speak to me again."

Raven's communication habits were not my main concern right then, I'm sorry to say. "Well, you're not ... you're not getting back together with _Ryan_, are you?" The thought is almost as frightening as a new global ice age.

Sky sat up with a disgusted expression. "Ick! No! Of course not! He's going to Scotland tomorrow."

I made a mock prayer gesture. "Well, that's a relief. I mean, it only took you, what, two or three years to get over him?"

"You're not helping," she said sharply. I had realized that earlier on and sat down on the coffee table across from her. Her eyes narrowed slightly; using the coffee table as a seat was, back at our house in Widow's Vale, a crime punishable by death.

"You're choosing Raven over him," I stated.

"Of course I am." She paused for a long moment. "I loved Ryan, I really did. And I think that part of me still does, but ..." She looked at me with teary eyes. "I love her so much more."

"I know," I said sympathetically. "Make her understand that, then. The music festival is tomorrow. It seems like the perfect opportunity."

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

The next morning found Bree and I seated at a table set up by the local town committee at the music festival, listening to a Welsh musician singing slowly and soulfully and sampling some delicious potato salad.

The festival committee had clearly worked its butt off to create such a wonderful atmosphere in the town square; real fifteen-feet-long strands of ivy were curled around the streetlamps surrounding the square, flowers and green bud sprigs were tossed haphazardly around the dance floor, seating, and buffet areas, and the whole square was resonating energy, not just from the music, which worked its way through the town due to several strategically placed speakers, but from the presence of so many witches and Wiccans. It was clear that Portrush's main demographic group, religiously speaking, practiced Wicca.

Bree nudged my elbow, and I looked up from my potato salad in time to see Raven walking towards our table, looking much happier than when we had seen her last.

"Well, look who dragged herself out of bed this morning," I said teasingly.

Raven just smiled enigmatically, pulled up a chair, and sat down at the table. "Have you guys seen Sky?"

"Not yet," Bree said. "She was still asleep when we left the lodge."

"Are you going to talk to her?" I asked softly.

"I suppose I have to," Raven said, heaving a sigh. "I mean, what she said last night through the door was ..."

"Sorta convincing, huh?" I asked with a slight grin.

"Look, Raven ..." Bree began, leaning forward slightly. "I know that what she did was horrible, but ... she feels really awful about it."

"I know," was all that Raven said.

"Maybe you should hear her out," Bree suggested.

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

My enthusiasm at wondering whether Kennet had managed to discover anything about the mysterious house at 14 Ingalls Road was destroyed with the mournful look on his face as he sat down across from me at the table that I had claimed at the music festival.

"Did you find anything out?"

"Not a thing," he said glumly. "No home ownership records, no rent or mortgage records ... nothing. Apparently, no one even knew that people still lived out in the old Ballynigel area."

This information was slightly disturbing and mystifying, but ... "Do you think maybe we should just let it be for a few days?"

A smile split Kennet's features. "Yes." He looked around at the myriad of people enjoying themselves by the buffet, on the dance floor, and in the seating areas. "Yes, I agree. This is a day for enjoyment."

I grinned as well.

Looking over towards the table where I had seen Sky sitting before, I was about to go drop in on her when, stopping, I saw that Raven had beat me to her.

"Aww, look at them," Morgan said, coming up behind me and watching them, too. "So happy."

"Yeah," I said, smiling and turning to look at her. "And now ..." I heard the slow strumming of a ballad beginning to waft over the speakers. "Dance with me."

She smiled and took my hand.

_Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time  
__Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you  
__Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out in time  
__Hung me on a line  
__Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you_

_Maybe I'm a girl and maybe I'm a lonely girl  
__Who's in the middle of something  
__That she doesn't really understand  
__Maybe I'm a girl and maybe you're the only man  
__Who could ever help me  
__Baby, won't you help me understand? _

**SKY'S P.O.V**

I can't believe that I almost lost her. Moreover, I can't believe that she granted me forgiveness. I'm not going to ever, at least not purposely, endanger our relationship over something so stupid again, that's for sure. I know I was over Ryan. I was maybe just a little afraid to accept that.

Raven and I are strong enough to face the challenges presented to us, be they normal or magick-related.

But how many challenges will we have to face? Us, or with our friends?

I suppose that only time will tell.

_Maybe I'm a girl and maybe I'm a lonely girl  
__Who's in the middle of something  
__That she doesn't really understand  
__Maybe I'm a girl and maybe you're the only man  
__Who could ever help me  
__Baby, won't you help me understand? _

_Maybe I'm amazed at the way you're with me all the time  
__Maybe I'm afraid of the way I leave you  
__Maybe I'm amazed at the way you help me sing my song  
__Right me when I'm wrong_

_

* * *

__  
Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you  
  
_

* * *


	12. Superstitions

**Disclaimer**: Call me a dork, but I'm really enjoying writing this story [giggles], and I hope you guys are enjoying reading it. In response to a review on "Sweep: The Random Parodies" to a certain lover of darkness [cough] ... you know who you are ... your time of darkness will soon come, if you know what I mean. Which you should. Because we spent whole PE periods discussing it. So you should know. Anyway, message for Madman (in addition to the previous one) and Devil Woman: I miss you guys so much! Writing these stories without you isn't the same! To the rest of you, if you think that the quality of the parodies is slipping, it's only because the humor-writing team of nofurylikewiccansscorned has been divided down the middle. [sniff] Anyway, here's Part XII! Enjoy! The song is Dar Williams' "Calling the Moon". {}'s indicate dreams. The line about The Exorcist comes from BtVS. If you don't know what BtVS stands for, don't worry about it.

**Summary**: Morgan, upon discovering an old Ballynigel cemetery, visits her grandmother's grave and falls victim to a mysterious illness.

**Part XII**: Superstitions

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

I felt sort of guilty for sneaking out and leaving Hunter and the others at the lodge, but sometimes one needs privacy and time to think without constant interruptions. It wasn't that I didn't love my friends or want to talk to them; I had just been around them so much lately that I felt that a bit of a break would do us all good.

I was pretty sure that I had been annoying everyone for the past few days with my constant complaining. Not about them or anything, but about the headaches.

I couldn't exactly pinpoint the date that the headaches started, but I was about 90% sure in my mind that they had started after I had that first dream ... or nightmare ... on the plane into Ireland. My head had felt like my brain was trying to pound out of my skull for the rest of the day, but I took some Advil and shrugged it off as just a lack of sleep. The trouble? I had been having the same dreams every night since then.

Every night. I felt like Harry Potter in the fifth book, you know, where he's having all those dreams and he can't explain them. My dreams, while not about dark corridors and a door that won't open, are about something else.

Death. Pain. Sadness. Utter grief.

I didn't know how to explain it, but I knew that they couldn't mean anything good. Obviously. All I knew was that when I woke up, shaking and sweating profusely, my heart pounding so fast that it almost hurt, I was crying. When I woke up, each time, there were tears running down my cheeks and I couldn't stop them. I lay in bed next to Hunter, who slept peacefully away, his dreams not plagued by unimaginable fear, and cried silently until I finally realized, night after night, that I didn't know why I was crying.

I had considered telling Hunter about the dreams, about seeing the moon full and blood spilling from an unknown source. But I could barely explain them in my head; how could I possibly give them words with my voice?

I walked down an abandoned road somewhere in the Irish countryside, trying to mull over my dreams in my head while ignoring the pounding migraine that was harassing my thoughts, and sighed with frustration. It was no use. I had taken more medicine (unfortunately not anything very strong, because Hunter, much to Sky's embarrassment, had forbidden any of us to possess painkillers any stronger than Tylenol in her presence), but nothing had helped. I had a slight feeling that Hunter was just joking, but it was best not to test him.

_The moon wanted more of my night  
__I turned off the engine and the headlights  
__The trees appeared as they'd never been gone  
__I promised the fields I'd return from now on  
__And the moon kept on rising  
__I had no more to say  
__I put my roadmaps away  
__And surrendered the day_

Something was calling me towards it. My eyes narrowed as I looked around the countryside, the rolling hills providing a wonderful sense of security. What was telling me to keep walking? My feet hurt, my head was aching, and a cold breeze that had just flown by had reduced me to one big human goosebump. I didn't want to keep walking.

But I did. My sandals slipped over the rocks lying haphazardly across the meadow pathway and my skirt blew out behind me, but I kept walking. I shivered and rubbed my arms in an attempt to encourage circulation. I was freezing cold suddenly. It vaguely occurred to me in the back of my mind that it was the middle of July; I shouldn't be this cold.

I could see something in the distance. It was so faint, but it was definitely there. It looked like a cemetery. I could see what looked like a mausoleum hidden behind a grove of trees.

_And I know you'll be calling me soon  
__And if I don't answer I'm calling the moon  
__Calling the moon  
__I was calling her then  
__I'm wondering will she take me again?  
__Oh, I am calling the moon_

As I got closer, I saw that it was unquestionably a cemetery. I shivered again slightly as I stepped off the main road and walked through the grass towards the cemetery, my skirt picking up burrs and grass bits. The wind was blowing with such force that I almost took a step backwards when I lifted my foot off the ground in mid-step.

Suddenly the high grass disappeared and I stepped down on grass that was short and stiff. The wind stopped blowing almost instantly. I stifled a shudder and looked around me. About sixty or seventy graves were arranged in a massive circle with a single solitary headstone in the middle. The stone in the middle was slightly larger and taller than the others surrounding it, the inscription upon it faded with time and wear.

**MACKENNA RIORDAN  
****BELTANE 1939 – IMBOLC 1982  
****M'EUDAIL MATHAIR  
****ALAINN BEAN CHEILE**

My breath came in short, quick gasps; I stared at the gravestone, a mix of horror, amazement, and shock on my face. Mackenna Riordan ... she was my grandmother. My real grandmother.

_M'eudail mathair_ ... beloved mother.

_Alainn bean cheile_ ... beautiful wife.

This was where my ancestors was buried. This was the Ballynigel cemetery.

I whirled around, staring at the other headstones around me. I saw one that evidently belonged to Kelleher Riordan, born around Litha, 1931, and died on Imbolc, 1982 ... my grandfather? Other names jumped out at me ... MacQuaid, Shanley, Colleen, Ailidh, Aingeal ... all dead on Imbolc, 1982.

The dark wave ...

The thought was so sudden and clear that I gasped aloud; when had I thought that? I hadn't. My mind hadn't even been close to making that jump. But I knew that it was true, somehow ... I knew that it was true.

This was what the dark wave had done. It had murdered my family.

Suddenly I felt the urge to run. I wanted to run so far away from here that I would never have to return, never have to face what I had found here.

Morgan.

I heard my name being whispered, so quietly that it sounded as if someone had just spoken softly in my ear. But it came from inside me.

I started shivering. It wasn't cold, but suddenly I was shaking so hard that I had to forcibly stop my teeth from chattering. Why was I shaking so much?

I was running. I ran so quickly and so blindly away from the cemetery, back up the meadow road, that I nearly tripped over loose rocks and stones as I sprinted. My lungs were burning and I couldn't breathe, but I kept running. My muscles were seized up and I was laboring for air, but I knew that I had to get out of there.

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

I was surprised that I hadn't sensed Morgan enter the lodge that after she had left an hour ago for a walk. She had insisted that she go alone, and I, realizing that she may need some time to herself, had agreed. However, the look on her face as she walked into the kitchen, where Sky, Raven, and Bree were making dinner and Robbie and I were playing Egyptian Rat Screw – some American card game that he was struggling to teach me – argued that the walk had done her more harm than good.

"Are you all right?" I asked, instantly concerned. She just looked at me, an exhausted look of weariness on her face. I noticed the large bags under her eyes; had she been sleeping lately?

"God, Morgan," Bree said in horror. "Have you been sleeping? You've got huge bags under your eyes."

Am I perceptive or what?

"I'm fine," Morgan said firmly, leaning against the counter and narrowly avoiding a bowl of marinara sauce. She eyed with apprehension the food that Sky had just placed on the counter: some kind of weird pasta thing and a huge basket of fresh-baked breadsticks.

"Do I want to know?" she asked with her eyebrows raised.

"The only cookbooks in the cupboards were Italian," Sky explained. "So we're having Lasagna Florentine. Dig in."

"So what all is in this?" I asked, eyeing it.

"Cooked sausage chopped with spinach, ricotta, and eggs, seasoned with garlic, mixed with Asiago, parmesan, mozzarella, and provolone, and baked to perfection," Sky said all in one breath.

"How did you just _say _that?"

Morgan collapsed down at the table next to Robbie as I dished up plates of lasagna for us. She rested her head on her arms and slumped against the tablecloth. Robbie looked at her warily.

"You're just begging the question, Morganita," he said slowly. "What's wrong?"

She sat up quickly and smiled briefly at me when I set down a heaping plate of pasta and a couple breadsticks in front of her. "Nothing, really. It's just been a long day."

"Yeah, considering how much you helped us in cleaning up the lodge, you must be really exhausted," Bree said sarcastically, although she was grinning as she sat down on Morgan's other side.

"Sorry," Morgan said with an apologetic grin as she stabbed the lasagna with her fork. "I've just been feeling out of it lately."

Hmm. That was true. I had been able to tell that recently she had been acting _very _out of it. She seemed distanced from us somehow, and I couldn't help but feel that when I talked to her she only picked up on half of the words I said.

I took her hand in a gesture of comfort. "What you need is some sleep. Why don't you take a nap after dinner?"

Her eyes widened slightly for some reason. "Um, no," she said quickly. "I-I'm not tired." She didn't make eye contact with anyone for the rest of the meal and rushed out of the kitchen after a hurried compliment to Sky on the quality of her breadsticks. I noticed, however, that she hadn't eaten any. As a matter of fact, she had barely touched her lasagna _or_ breadsticks.

Bree looked miffed. "Yeah, Sky, how'd you get the breadsticks so good? I made half of them and mine didn't turn out nearly as well as yours. I followed all of the instructions."

Sky shrugged. "I decided to try a trick that Ma told me once. Fry them in extra-virgin olive oil and a few herbs in a cast-iron skillet. Supposedly, it never fails."

"Oh, please," I said. "You've been able to cook like this since you were a kid."

"Big Easy-Bake fan?" Bree asked dryly. Sky just nodded.

"My favorite toy from ages 5-10."

"You should try her chocolate walnut pie," Raven said. "It's killer."

_What_?

I glared at Sky accusingly. "You said that you only made that for me!" Now I was hurt. "It was a cousin bonding thing!"

Sky immediately excused herself to the bathroom. Still feeling slightly betrayed, I headed upstairs. I would get her for that. The next time that she made chocolate walnut pie, I would refuse to eat any. That'd show her.

Taking my mind off my petty problems, I found Morgan in our room, sitting on the bed in a daze, staring off into space.

"Morgan?" I asked, slightly uneasily. "Are you feeling all right?"

Once again, she was on the defensive. "For the fifth time, Hunter, I'm fine! Why can't you guys just drop it? _I'm fine_." She locked herself in the bathroom after that. I stared at the door for a moment, quite confused as to what had just happened. I knew that Morgan would prefer to have her privacy if she was in a touchy mood and so I went downstairs to help my traitorous cousin clean up after dinner.

_When I called the moon back to me  
__I thought she wanted my beauty  
__I shone in the best that vanity buys  
__I covered the path where my life turned to lies  
__And the moon kept on rising  
__But I felt nothing at all  
__She comes when the empire falls  
__And shines on crumbling walls_

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

I leaned against the sink in the bathroom, breathing heavily and trying to clear my vision, which had gone blurry. I reached down, fumbling for a moment, and turned on the faucet. As cold water spilled into the sink basin, I splashed some on my face and shook my head to clear my vision. My head was aching so badly that I was on the verge of running down to the local pharmaceutical and demanding that they supply me with morphine. Anything to get rid of the pain.

I dried my face off on the fluffy pink towel hung up by the bathtub and sat down on the toilet with the lid down, my head in my hands.

Why did this hurt so much? My entire body was pulsing with agony, but I knew that sleeping would only bring more dreams, more nightmares.

I suddenly found myself thinking of my grandmother. Mackenna Riordan. I had never seen a picture of her, never even really wondered who she was. I knew that she was my biological grandmother, but I had never concentrated on learning about my other family members. It was all about Maeve and Ciaran. Why was I concentrating on Mackenna so much? Why was she the only thought on my mind?

I needed help. It was then that I decided it time to swallow my pride and personal issues about whatever was happening. I needed help, and I needed to tell someone about my dreams.

Still shaking slightly, the pounding inside my head ever stronger, I unlocked the bathroom door and wandered downstairs to find Hunter.

He took the news of the dreams better than I thought he would. I had expected that he would immediately jump up, phone the council, and let the entire witch world know that Morgan Rowlands was seeing things in her dreams again because dreams _always _mean something. But no. He just looked at me in confusion for a long time.

"You can't remember _anything_ about them?"

I sighed in irritation. "Hunter, I've already told you. I wake up and all I'm left with is this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know that what I'm seeing is a premonition of something, but I ... I don't know what it is."

He looked at me in that pitying way that I've always found incredibly annoying. It's nice to have someone concentrating fully on you, but not when they've got that look on their face.

"Well, I suppose I could ask Sky or Kennet what they think of the dreams ..."

"No," I said quickly. "Don't involve any more people in this. It'll just ..." I sighed. "It's not worth it. Not when I don't know anything for real about them."

"They might be able to help," he said weakly.

"Help how?" I asked cynically. "I barely know anything about these dreams in the first place. All I know is that I see death and pain and destruction and I wake up crying and I'm afraid to sleep!"

By now, I was struggling not to cry. Hot tears were burning my eyes, and I ducked my head quickly, wiping them away. Hunter was immediately there, whispering consolingly in my ear with his arms around me.

"It'll be all right, love ... we'll figure this out."

"I don't know how we can," I whispered, my voice scratchy. "If I don't understand them, how can anyone else?"

It was with the utmost reluctance that I allowed myself to crawl into bed that night. Hunter was there and I felt physically safe, but not emotionally. Would I dream about death again? Would I have to live through fear that I felt was mine, not knowing what it was I was so afraid of?

_{Why can't I move? This stone is so cold ... I can't feel my hands.}_

_{Sky and Hunter ... they're in trouble ... somehow I know ... why are my friends here? I told them to stay away ... }_

_{A crack ... something is opening ... the ground is splitting ... I can hear the shrieking ... it sounds like someone is dying ... but, wait, someone _is _dying ... I know this, too. But who is it?} _

_{Oh, Goddess ... not him, please not him ...} _

"Morgan! Morgan, wake up!"

I couldn't see even though my eyes were open. My vision adjusted to the darkness after a moment and I realized that Hunter was shaking me, his voice frantic.

_Calling the moon  
__By the name that she chose  
__As Tennessee wandered in moth-eaten robes  
__Oh, I am calling the moon  
__Calling the moon  
__Oh, I am calling the moon_

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

"Morgan, are you okay?"

She was staring at me, a wild and fearful look in her eyes. She backed away from me and out of the bed, flattening herself against the wall. She made a noise in her throat between a cough and a gasp, and I stared at her. What the hell was going on? She started coughing more loudly, grabbing at her throat as if she were choking. She fell to her knees, still clutching her throat and gasping.

Instantly, I rushed over to her, fumbling slightly in the darkness, and turned on the bedside table light. She was sitting on the floor, gasping for breath, no longer clutching her throat. I stared.

"Morgan –"

"I'm okay," she whispered, her voice hoarse. She coughed slightly. "I'm okay." She stood up slowly, wobbling on her feet. I took her arm and gently guided her back to the bed, where she sat down.

She looked awful. Her hair was tangled and there were, once again, huge bags under her eyes. She reached up and touched her throat gingerly.

"I couldn't breathe," she whispered. "I couldn't breathe. I woke up from a nightmare, and I couldn't breathe." She turned to stare at me, looking thoroughly frightened. "Why couldn't I breathe?"

"I don't know ..."

"I think I know," Sky said the next morning when I conferred with her before breakfast. Morgan hadn't slept the entire rest of the night; I had stayed awake with her, just being there, and now I, too, was exhausted.

"What?" I asked in surprise. "I haven't been able to think of anything."

"I guess girls are just smarter," she said, grinning. "Anyway, about Morgan ... does she have an obsession with death?"

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, is it something that she thinks about or has thought about a lot lately?"

This question thoroughly baffled me. "Um ... I don't know? It's not something that we regularly discuss."

"Um ... I suppose maybe a little," Morgan said after breakfast when Sky asked her. "I mean, I just visited my real grandmother's grave yesterday, so I guess I've been thinking about it a little ..."

"You didn't tell me that," I said, shocked that she could conceal something like visiting Mackenna Riordan's grave from me. She looked sheepish.

"I didn't think you'd be interested."

"Of course I would be," I said seriously. "Anything that you ever need to talk about –"

"Okay, I'm interrupting the lovey-dovey type stuff to share my official opinion," Sky said quickly. "Morgan has ghost sickness."

I swiveled my head around to stare at Sky. Had she gone mad? "What do you mean, ghost sickness?"

"It's a Native American cultural superstitious disorder, although it does have a basis in fact," Sky said knowledgably. "A preoccupation with death, sometimes associated with the practice of witchcraft and occasionally with symptoms of nightmares, dizziness, weakness, feelings of danger or anxiety, dizziness and fainting, an occasional sense of suffocation, and poor appetite."

Morgan and I both stared at her. She motioned a book that she was holding, aptly labeled Cultural Superstitions of the Comanche Native American Tribes.

"It's a bit of light reading," she said airily. "I think it has merit, don't you? It describes your situation perfectly, Morgan."

"It does," Morgan admitted. "But how is it cured?"

"Um ... I don't want to say an exorcism, but ..."

"No!" Morgan said quickly. "No! Exorcisms aren't an option! I saw that movie! Even the priest died!"

Apparently, no amount of persuading would do any good; Morgan unfalteringly refused to allow us to perform an exorcism on her. Sky wanted to try to convince her by saying that she had done one before, but I stopped her, reminding her that her last one was on our cat at age eight. Sir Whiskerson was never quite the same; he always seemed rather twitchy afterwards.

_Make sense of me, night  
__I can see so much from this cold height  
__The moon said, "Oh, darkness, my work is done,  
__I've poured this bottle of light from the sun  
__But their anger keeps on rising  
__And they don't understand  
__I've shown them all that I can  
__That the world is at hand." _

**MORGAN'S P.O.V**

I was not going to have an exorcism performed on me.

I'm sorry, but that movie was really scary.

Instead, my course of action to rid myself of ghost sickness will be to get rid of it at the source by performing a spell that I had found in one of Hunter's many spell books. It was just a simple ritual, but I hoped that it would work. I grabbed one black candle out of Hunter's suitcase and a match, feeling overall too drained to attempt to light the candle with my mind. As I lit the match, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I knew that spells affecting the mind in such a direct way could be dangerous.

Thinking about my nightmares, I was sure.

"_Take away my dreams excess,"_ I whispered, quietly so that none of the others would hear me. "_Let dreams not me stress. Let the wings of night enfold; let dreamless sleep me hold_."

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

When I walked into my lodge room that night, Morgan was lying on the bed, sound asleep. Her breathing was deep and even, and I could tell even without casting my senses out that she was asleep.

I smiled to myself and settled down to bed.

My relief that she had managed to calm her subconscious down, however, was not assuaged for long. She was not awake by noon the next day, and I knew that, while Morgan was not a morning person, she never slept that late.

"Morgan?" I asked gently, shaking her shoulder slightly. "Morgan, wake up, love. It's already noon."

Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled sleepily at me, a smile that made my stomach do flip-flops. In the next second, though, she was out of bed and racing towards the bathroom so quickly that I wondered vaguely why she wasn't on the school's track team; however, the sound of her vomiting brought me immediately into the bathroom.

"Morgan!" She was lying in front of the toilet, gasping heavily for breath. She turned to look at me for a brief moment before her eyes closed and she fainted on the bathroom carpet.

Goddess, what was wrong with her?

_And I know they'll be calling me soon  
__And if I don't answer I'm only the moon  
__I can see by her light  
__This one's going out to the moon tonight  
__Oh, I am calling the moon  
__Calling the moon  
__  
__Because I know what it's worth  
__To tug at the seas and illumine the earth  
__Oh, I am calling the moon  
__Oh, I am calling the moon_


	13. Essentially Imperfect

**Disclaimer**: Chapter 13! Ohh ... bad luck? Nah, because it's _Sweep_, and _Sweep_ is awesome! That's not to say, however, that there's not bad luck in _Sweep_. In this chapter, there's a whole ton of bad luck ... mwahaha ... but I digress. The song is "Story of a Girl" by 9 Days. Please read and review!

**Summary**: When Morgan is hospitalized after fainting, Sky meets a young teenage girl with mysterious and extraordinary divinatory gifts.

**Title**: Essentially Imperfect

_This is the story of a girl  
__Who cried a river and drowned the whole world  
__And while she looks so sad in photographs  
__I absolutely love her  
__When she smiles_

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

I hadn't truly realized what had just transpired until I saw Morgan lying on the gurney at the hospital in Antrim, Ireland, unconscious and with an oxygen mask covering her mouth and nose. Portrush was a small community and didn't have its own hospital, so Sky had run over to the council building, hurriedly explained to them that we desperately needed a car, and she, Bree, Robbie, Raven, and I high-tailed it to the nearest clinic, unfortunately 45 minutes away, with an comatose Morgan in tow.

Luckily, the hospital did not appear to be overly crowded even though Antrim was a much larger town than Portrush; Morgan was immediately being examined by nurses and orderlies as we ran in with her, and the entire time, I was chanting over and over in my head: "She'll be okay. It's nothing serious. She'll be okay ..."

"What's wrong with her?" Raven demanded of the nurse currently wheeling Morgan down one of the many hospital corridors as the five of us trailed nervously behind the gurney.

"Is she going to be okay?" Bree asked.

"She's been having really awful headaches lately, if that helps at all ..." I offered, my heart thumping unhealthily fast.

The nurse sighed in frustration, clearly annoyed with our constant inquiries as to Morgan's health when she had not even begun to examine her yet. "Look, I apologize, all of you, but I'm going to have to take her to see a doctor." She pushed Morgan through a set of double doors. "The lot of you cannot pass through these doors."

With that, she disappeared into the new arrivals ward and left us standing there; looking at my friends, I knew that they were just as disappointed as I was.

"Okay ..." Sky said with a sigh. "I suppose we'll just wait here, then."

"She's going to be okay, right?" Robbie asked with a note of panic in his voice. "I mean, it's nothing bad, is it? She just fainted. It's nothing serious, right?"

"I hope so," I whispered, casting a forlorn glance at the large gray double doors before turning and starting to walk slowly back down the corridor towards the lobby. "I mean, she had been asleep for about fifteen hours beforehand. Maybe just standing up so quickly caused a blood rush to her head that knocked her out."

"Let's hope that's all it is," Raven said.

All five of us plopped down simultaneously in a long row of plastic chairs in the lobby across from a woman whose son was bleeding profusely from his nose. I grimaced slightly and picked up a travel guide from a small stack of magazines on the end table next to me to distract myself with.

Sky was looking around the lobby and watching a few orderlies talking with detached interest. "I was hoping to not have to be in a hospital again so soon." She reconsidered that statement. "Or ever again."

"At least it's not you in there," Bree said with a shrug. "So be grateful for that."

"Oh, right," Sky said sarcastically. "Because having it be one of my friends in trouble this time makes it so much better." She paused, staring at the floor for a moment, and then looked at me quickly.

"Hey, Hunter, can I use the phone that you borrowed from Kennet? I want to call Ma."

I looked at her in surprise. "Right now?"

She shrugged. "Well, why not? We're likely to be here for a while."

Bree looked distraught. "Now, when you say that, you mean it'll be because they want to keep Morgan here just to make sure that nothing's wrong when, in reality, she'll be perfectly fine, right? Not because there'll be something wrong with her, right?"

"Right," Sky said firmly.

"Good," Bree said with a little huff, settling back down in her chair.

Seeing no way out of handing over the cell phone that Kennet had loaned me in case we ever ran across an emergency, I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and handed it to my cousin.

"Fine, fine," I sighed. "Call everyone you know, if you must."

Sky just took it and had already pressed the on button, ready to venture to a quieter part of the hospital, when I called after her. "But don't use all of my minutes!"

She looked at me in incredulity. "Kennet has 6500 minutes pre-programmed onto here!"

"Well, yes," I conceded, "but I figure that since he's paying the bill, I ought to get at least 6300 for myself."

"Greedy."

"Just go use the phone," I said in exasperation.

_How many days in the year  
__She woke up with hope  
__But she only found tears  
__Acting so insincere  
__Making the promises never for real  
__As long as she stands there waiting  
__Wearing the holes in the soles of her shoes  
__How many days disappear?  
__You look in the mirror so how do you choose? _

**SKY'S P.O.V**

Ma was apparently more concerned about Morgan's condition than we were if her constant questions and worries gave any indication as to her true feelings on the subject. As she had put it, and I had to admit that she had a point, perfectly healthy people, especially witches as strong as Morgan, do not faint without an exceptional reason. She was babbling on about some disease or another that she had heard affected a victim's nervous system and thus resulted in sporadic fainting fits when I stopped her.

"No, Ma, we don't think it's anything terribly serious. Chances are it was just a blood rush to the head."

"For all you know, it could be something much more severe," she grumbled.

"I know it could be, but with an attitude like that it probably _will _turn out to be," I said sternly. "Haven't you ever heard of self-fulfilling prophecies?"

She sounded triumphant. "You see, that was always one of your faults, Athar. Overly optimistic."

I snorted. She clearly had been away for quite a long time. "I'm not being overly optimistic. I just think you're being overly pessimistic."

I noticed then with a slight double take that I had somehow wandered down one of the hospital's multiple corridors that looked exactly the same and wound up in front of what I assumed was the children's ward. A large set of double doors was painted to resemble a flower field with grass and bright red and yellow flowers, and drawings clearly made by young children were taped to the doors, some depicting cute little houses with flowers and puppies in the front yard and, one, a squadron of military jets engaged in an air battle clearly drawn by a little boy.

"Athar? What are you doing?"

Ma's voice brought me back to my senses, but I still stared at the children's ward door in curiosity. What was I doing here? "Nothing. I just wandered to the children's ward for some reason."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

I turned around and began walking back up the corridor. Ma and I stayed on the phone for a bit longer, discussing for some reason the new television show that she was quite fond of: _American Idol_. I found the news that my mother watched American reality TV semi-disturbing.

"I'd like to hear Simon do a better job than some of those contestants that he constantly abuses," I said firmly as she declared that she always agreed with what Simon Cowell said to the contestants and thought that he was quite reasonable.

"He could."

"He could not."

"Could, too."

"Could not."

Receiving a witch message from Hunter, however, brought me out of the reverie.

Sky, Morgan's awake. Come to Room 185. -

Thank the Goddess. If she was awake already, then whatever was wrong with her, if anything, must not have been very serious.

"Listen, Ma, I just got a message from Hunter. Morgan's awake. I have to go, okay? ... Love you, too. I'll call you this weekend."

_Your clothes never wear as well the next day  
__And your hair never falls out quite the same way  
__You never seem to run out of things to say_

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

When Bree, Robbie, Raven, and I were allowed into Morgan's room, she was sitting up in bed, very much alive but looking exhausted. We were instantly gathered around her bed, everyone demanding at once: "Are you okay?"

Morgan gave a tired laugh and leaned back against her pillow. "Yes, I feel fine. I don't know why I fainted ... or at least, that's what the nurse said happened."

"That _is _what happened," Bree said. "Maybe you should have something to eat. We could ask one of the nurses to bring you something ..."

Morgan just shook her head. "Really, I'm fine. I don't need anything to eat. I'm not even hungry."

The door to the room opened with a loud click and Sky poked her head inside.

"Oh, good!" she said cheerfully. "You're awake!"

"And kicking," Morgan said with a definitively happy tone to her voice.

"That's good," Sky said as she handed me back Kennet's phone. I couldn't help but wonder how many of my precious 6300 minutes she had used up.

"Yeah ..." Morgan said, her voice suddenly softening. I smoothed her hair reassuringly, and she smiled gratefully at me before turning to look at the others.

"Um, guys, could I talk to Hunter and Sky for a second?"

Sky and I both looked at her in puzzlement while Robbie, Bree, and Raven didn't move. Bree was still clasping Morgan's hand tightly.

"Um, alone?"

I could tell that she felt bad about asking the others to leave, but there was clearly something that she wanted to say that she felt she couldn't in front of them. Probably something blood-witchy. This meant that it couldn't be good.

"Sure," Bree said inattentively, letting go of Morgan's hand and walking a little too fast out of the room. Robbie looked after her in confusion for a moment and then looked at Raven; she just shrugged, and the two of them went after Bree.

Sky and I, now the only other two left in the room, exchanged looks as Morgan stared down at her hands. When she raised her head to look at us, however, there were suddenly tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Goddess, Morgan," I said quickly, immediately concerned. I grabbed her hand and kissed her forehead. "What's wrong? What is it?"

Morgan was obviously trying not to cry and with very little luck; her eyes were growing redder, and a tear slipped down her cheek.

"It's my head ..." she whispered, her voice breaking. "God, it hurts so much. It hurts more than any headache I've ever had in my whole life ... it feels like my brain pounded out of my head and fell on the floor ... then got stepped on or something ..."

"Ew ..." Sky said in disgust. Morgan and I stared at her; she looked embarrassed. "Um, I mean, ow. It must be really painful."

"I didn't want the others to see me cry because ..." Morgan took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair; I noticed that her arms were shaking slightly. "Because I cast a spell on myself yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before ... God, I don't even know what day it is ..."

My mind was stuck on her earlier words. "What kind of spell?"

"A spell to ban dreams," she whispered, not meeting my gaze.

Sky and I both stared at her for a moment, then at each other, then back at her.

"To ban ... dreams?" I repeated.

"Meaning all dreams? Not just nightmares?" Sky questioned.

A sheepish expression crossed Morgan's face. "Well, I meant nightmares, but I guess that's not how I phrased it ..."

Well, no wonder. No wonder she was in such pain right now.

"I suppose that explains it, then," I muttered to Sky. She just nodded.

"What?" Morgan demanded warily. "What explains what?"

"The spell that you cast on yourself explains why you have such a mammoth headache," I reiterated.

"Why?"

Sky launched into her infamous knowledge-mode. "Because dreams are the way that your subconscious releases stress and anxiety while you're asleep. Even if one doesn't remember any, a person normally has four or five dreams a night. If you cast a spell on yourself to ban all dreams, and I suppose we can assume that it worked, then your subconscious isn't mulling through its stress while you sleep." She looked worried. "All of that baggage just stays in there, and eventually it piles up to the point where you feel so mentally overloaded that you just can't function normally."

I seemed to remember that Bree had gotten Sky a book about dream interpretation for her birthday in May. "What she said."

Morgan looked less than thrilled. "So I have to, what? Remove the spell?"

"I suppose so," Sky said slowly.

The tears had returned to Morgan's eyes, and I held her hand a little more gently. "But I ... I can't go back to having those nightmares ..." Her voice choked up. "They're so awful and I don't understand them and I just want to not have them anymore!"

"I know, Morgan," I said sympathetically. "But ... you don't really have a choice. You have to remove the spell."

"The consequences could otherwise be much more serious than just a headache," Sky said hesitantly.

Morgan wouldn't meet either of our gazes, thinking over the prospect of seeing her visions and nightmares again. She sighed. "Okay." She looked at us. "When can I do it?"

"I think that sooner is better, right?" I asked Sky. She nodded.

"Most likely. Do you want me to go back to the lodge and get the stuff we'll need for a breaking spell?"

"Would you mind?" I asked reluctantly.

"Not intensely."

The discussion about breaking spells was temporarily suspended as a nurse walked into the room, carrying a huge pile of folders in her arms.

"All right, Miss Rowlands," she said in a strong Irish accent, struggling to remove the top folder and place it on the table next to the door. "All of your tests are normal, vitals are strong, so you may leave whenever you wish."

"Thank you," Morgan smiled.

"Welcome," the nurse said, stepping out of the room again and closing the door. "See to it that you never have to come back."

"Well, that's good news then, isn't it?" I asked quietly.

"I'll go back to the lodge for the stuff," Sky said, standing up and straightening her jacket. "I'll be back in an hour and a half."

"Hurry," was all that Morgan said.

Sky was halfway out of the door when she looked back at the table next to the door that the nurse had set Morgan's folder onto in curiosity.

"Hey, she left someone else's folder in here, too." She picked it a thick manila folder and examined the name on the label. "Someone named Alexis Rody." She shrugged. "I suppose I'll drop this off in the right room on my way out. How do you tell what the room number is?"

I remembered seeing a glance of Morgan's makeshift folder when we first brought her in. "Look at the ID number on the label. I think the second number is the room number."

"Um ... it says 217-7846 375. So is 375 the room number?"

"Most likely," I said. "Look at the map outside to see where it is."

Sky poked her head out of the door and examined the green and blue map of the hospital that was posted on the wall opposite Morgan's room's door.

"Huh ..." was all that she said.

"What?" I asked inquiringly.

"Nothing," she said quickly. "I'll be back soon."

_This is the story of a girl  
__Who cried a river and drowned the whole world  
__And while she looks so sad in photographs  
__I absolutely love her  
__When she smiles_

**SKY'S P.O.V**

While I made my way to the children's ward of the hospital, I vaguely wondered why I was going there. I had found myself there for some reason earlier when I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. The nurse had left a folder in Morgan's room that belonged in Room 375, and all of the 300 rooms were in the children's ward. Something or someone—kind of a creepy thought—wanted me to go to the children's ward for reasons unknown to me.

Or I was just being paranoid. I decided that choice B was just as reasonable as choice A.

The doors covered with pictures and portraits drawn by young children looked very lonely and completely out of place at the end of the gray corridor leading to it; I couldn't help but shiver slightly and wonder how many children were forced to stay in this hospital. It couldn't be much fun ... must have been frightening for all of them the first time they came down this hallway ...

For some reason, I looked over my shoulder to check for any nurses or orderlies in the hallway before stepping into the ward. Even though I was just in there to return a folder that had been misplaced, I knew from experience (Hunter and I had gotten lost when we were ten in the records room of a hospital back in England when his sister Alwyn was in the emergency room for a broken arm. We had gotten a very stern talking-to from the hospital chief when we knocked over a file cabinet full of paperwork) that being out of place in a hospital was never a good thing.

The main room of the children's ward was exactly as I would have imagined one to be and could not have been more different than the bland, sterile, gray corridor outside. A hallway branched off into three corridors from a small circular common room; I couldn't help but feel that I would much rather, personally, stay here than anywhere else in the hospital. Small, child-size poofy armchairs and stools were arranged in front of miniature televisions and coloring tables, and stuffed animals and beanbags were tossed haphazardly around the room. A rug shaped like a vibrant purple flower decorated the floor, and more drawings and paintings done by children were taped to the walls in addition to the framed photographs of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bullwinkle the Moose, Bugs Bunny, and other assorted cartoon characters that adorned the room. All of the chairs were abandoned; the television was off and the room was completely silent. I shivered again. The playroom, while warm and welcoming, was slightly cold without any people in it.

I stepped over the flower rug and over to the three branching corridors. After checking the folder again, I selected the hallway that led to rooms 367-399 and followed it down a carpeted hallway, the walls of which were, once more, decorated with drawings and, more noticeable than the others, a drawing of a bomb exploding and beheading twenty poor stick men, women, and children. The same kid that drew the one on the outside door must have drawn this one, too.

Gruesome.

I paused as I reached Room 375. Did I really want to go inside?

The answer was, inevitably, no. But I would just drop off the folder. I would drop off the folder and leave. It would take twenty seconds. So why was I hesitating?

"The door's open, you know."

A voice from inside the room had spoken, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I jumped. However, I pushed open the door and stepped halfway inside the room.

A brunette girl who couldn't have been younger than fifteen or sixteen years old was sitting upright in her hospital bed watching MTV on a television that was hanging from the wall. I looked around at the room décor. Posters and pictures torn out of magazines were spread around the walls; the faces of Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie, and Elijah Wood peered down at me as I noted the huge pile of cut-up magazines sitting on the bedside table.

This girl must have been a permanent resident, or had at least been here for quite a while.

"Just put the folder on the table there," the girl said, not diverting her gaze from the television.

I felt slightly unnerved. "It was left in my friend's room. The nurse ... I just wanted to bring it here."

The girl finally tore her stare away from the television and looked me right in the eyes; I suddenly felt very self-conscious as her eyes, deep brown, examined me.

"Oh, yeah, your friend," she said, her eyes narrowing slightly. "She fainted. Is she okay?"

"How did you -?" I began to say but then stopped. Wait a moment ...

"You're a witch."

It was she who said that, not me. I had been on the verge of saying it myself, but she had somehow beaten me to it. I narrowed my eyes and looked at her, scrutinizing every aspect of her.

"You're a witch," she repeated. "A good one, too. Wyndenkell ... strong parents, solid training. It's not every day that someone with your strength comes along."

I wondered how she would react when, and if, she ever met Morgan.

As I looked at her, she smiled suddenly. It was a curious smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth before spreading. "You want to know who I am, don't you?"

"Alexis Rody?"

She snorted. "Well, _that_ was difficult. But you're still wondering who I am. Knowing the name doesn't help."

This was turning out to be a very strange day. "All right, then," I said slowly. "Tell me who you are. Are you ... are you a witch, too?"

She shrugged. "My mother was a Rowanwand, and once a witch, always a witch, I suppose. But I haven't felt like one lately."

"Why not?"

"I haven't done a spell or anything in over two years." She laughed at my surprised look. "Oh, come on. I'm bedridden. How magickally active do you expect me to be?"

"You've been in here for two years?" I asked, my voice softening. "In that bed for that long?"

"Actually, two years and six months come September," she said thoughtfully. "Seems like longer ..."

I couldn't seem to think of anything to say. What _does _one say to a hospitalized teenage girl who has not been allowed out of bed rest for over two years?

"If you're wondering what to say to me, you might start with, 'Gee, Alexis, what're you in here for?'" she suggested.

I bit. "What are you in here for?"

"My mother left me here," she said. "Two years and four months ago. Gave the hospital a freaking huge check and left me here. I haven't heard from her since. Don't really expect to." She looked down at her hands. "It's not that bad, really. Good food, constant entertainment ..." She motioned the television. "Although, I must say, I got tired of daytime soap operas after two days in here." I couldn't help but smile at that.

She looked anxious. "You won't leave yet, will you?"

"What?"

"You have somewhere to be, things you need to get. But you're not going now, are you? You're the first real person I've talked to in months."

I was still speechless. I couldn't imagine being in her position with no one to ever talk to. I'm not an especially chatty person myself, not like Bree or Sharon Goodfine, one of our friends back in New York, but still ... "No. I'm not leaving yet."

It was not as if Morgan's headache would kill her immediately. She was not in any immediate jeopardy. However, thinking about her brain analogy instantly made me feel guilty.

Alexis smiled again. "Good." She looked at her folder, which was lying on the table near the door, and then back at me. "Want to know what I've got?" I didn't say anything, thinking it rude to ask something like that. "Oh, don't worry," she said quickly. "It wouldn't be impolite to ask. I'm used to it."

That was just scary. "How do you know what I'm thinking?" I demanded.

"If you'll let me explain ..." she said leadingly. I sighed.

"What have you got?"

"Hereditary ataxia," she said promptly.

My eyes narrowed, and I wracked my brain for any vague knowledge on the subject of the disease known as hereditary ataxia. All that I could remember was a comment on ataxias in passing.

"Isn't that a degenerative genetic disorder?"

"Damn straight," she said with a smile.

I could remember it more clearly now. I was pretty sure that I had heard of a disease similar to hereditary ataxia where the cerebellum was largely affected and was mostly associated with poor coordination of the limbs. I amaze myself with my own knowledge.

"Don't be so smug," Alexis said with a slight scowl, and I started slightly. "There's a lot you don't know about it. Or me. I'm getting better."

I smiled. "That's good. How?"

"Coenzyme supplements. It's helping, sort of. I have to work with a physical therapist every week to regain my ability to walk. I'm doing pretty well."

How do you know what I'm thinking?

"I guess it's because of the disease," she said calmly. I stared at her; I hadn't even said that aloud!

"What do you mean, because of the disease?" I said in confusion. "It affects your cerebellum, right? It shouldn't help you with ..."

"Psychic powers?" She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess not. For some reason, though, I suppose that it helped the other parts of me. Intelligence, senses, emotions ... they're all enhanced. It's like how they say that if you go blind or deaf your other senses will pick up the slack." She looked thoughtful. "I can't remember a time when I couldn't sense what people were thinking. The ataxia didn't activate until two years ago, but I've always been able to read people. Pretty accurately, too."

This was all too much for me. "What was that about your mother leaving you here?"

Alexis smiled bitterly. "My grandmother had the disease, too. Plus the gifts. They drove her to partial insanity, I think. My mom took care of her until she died, and I think that she really did love me, but ... I guess she just couldn't deal with what the disease meant for me."

She was lying. I could tell that right away even without the enhanced senses that she clearly had.

"Tell me the truth," I whispered. "I can ... you don't have to worry about me."

"I know," she said simply. "I know that you're strong enough to handle it, but I'm wondering about your cousin."

"My cousin?" How did she know about Hunter? Oh, right ... psychic powers. That made sense. Sort of.

"Yeah. I don't think that he is," she said contemplatively. "Strong enough, that is. He might react differently than you would."

This was turning into something that I'd expect could be featured in an episode of _The X-Files. _"Why would he react differently?"

Alexis just laughed. "Oh, come on. He's centered his entire life around the council. If he found out that they weren't really who he thought they were ..." She sighed. "Well, things wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure." She saw my confused look and explicated. "The council is after me. Have been for years. The only reason that they haven't stolen me away from the hospital is that a missing patient would attract way too much attention, especially if that missing patient can't walk and therefore can't leave on her own."

"The council isn't evil!"

"Do you really believe that?" she asked. "They've wanted access to my mind ever since I was born. They wanted my grandmother, too, but they never got her." I didn't believe her. How _could_ I believe her?

Her mouth split into a quirky smile. "You trust me. It irritates you that you feel you can trust me because I'm trashing the council and you don't want to betray your cousin's trust, but a tiny part of you is curious to see if I'm right."

"It really sucks to know an empath."

"I've been told that." Her dark eyes glowed with the prospect of a challenge. "Come on, I know you're strong enough for the truth. Are you willing to find it?"

Perhaps against my better judgment, I agreed to find what she called the truth. I wasn't sure what I was doing, but as our thoughts melded together and I began to experience her feelings and emotions as clearly as if they were mine, I knew that I would not regret my choice.

Tath meanmas are always draining, but I couldn't begin to explain the feeling of exhaustion that swept over me. I was watching a young girl, no more than six or seven, and an older woman that I assumed must be Alexis's mother speeding in a small car down an abandoned road, and I felt the fear coursing through my veins as if it were my own.

Alexis was watching two men in dark suits hitting her mother, hitting her so hard that she was bleeding, kicking her and torturing her with magick because she wouldn't tell them where her daughter was. They wanted her daughter's gifts, her powers, and they wouldn't stop hitting her until they got them. The little girl was in pain, but she couldn't do anything. She was stuck, she couldn't move; all that she could do was watch.

They burned a sigil onto her mother's flesh, one that I recognized from the multitude of books of black magick that Hunter had confiscated from magick abusers. Many of them had the sigil on the cover. It was death.

She had two weeks or thereabouts to live. The symbol would drain her of energy, magickal and otherwise. She had fourteen days to ensure that her daughter would not be stolen by the men that wanted her to promote themselves, for their twisted and corrupted benefit.

She was tired, exhausted ... she could barely move, but she had to get her daughter to safety. A hospital seemed the best place, they would watch over her there. A blank check, access to a bank account that had been filled to the bursting point with money for years. And then she was gone; the girl had learned to close her mind to the invasive attempts of the men that brutally murdered her mother.

A darkened room was coming into view; my eyes were barely adjusted when I heard voices, so clearly that I would have otherwise thought that someone was standing behind me.

"Finally. After fifteen years, we will finally get what we have been searching for."

It took me about two seconds to pull myself out of the mental connection between the girl in the hospital bed and I; breathing heavily, I stared at Alexis in shock. She looked back at me in fear.

"I've never seen them before," she said worriedly.

"How long have you been free to go?" I asked, running a nervous hand through my hair.

"Since yesterday," she said. "I guess they know about it, then."

The council is evil. The council is evil. The council is evil. Or at least, some of its members are evil. Goddess, why ... when ... how? I always thought that they were the epitome of white magick, of good. Taking it upon themselves to help others.

"Don't worry," I whispered, my voice shaking. "I won't ... I won't let them hurt you."

Her eyes were wide, staring at me with a kind of intensity that I had never seen before in anyone. It was dependence, complete and utter dependence. "Do you promise?"

I swallowed, my throat dry.

"Yes."

_This is the story of a girl  
__Who cried a river and drowned the whole world  
__And while she looks so sad in photographs  
__I absolutely love her  
__When she smiles_

_This is the story of a girl  
__Whose pretty face she hid from the world  
__And while she looks so and lonely there  
__I absolutely love her  
__When she smiles_


	14. Fallen Angels

**Disclaimer**: Um ... here's Part 14. The song is Aerosmith's "Fallen Angels." Pay attention to the lyrics for once [wink] because they're actually important at the end. I can't really think of anything to say other than please read and review, so ... yes. Please review! Love you guys!

**Summary**: The gang is faced with the prospect of complete isolation from the safety of the council when they help Alexis escape from the Antrim hospital.

**Part XIV**: Fallen Angels

_There's a candle burning in the world tonight  
__For another child who vanished out of sight  
__And a heart is broken  
__Another prayer in vain  
__There are a million tears that fill a sea of pain_

**SKY'S P.O.V**

I didn't expect the reaction from Hunter that I got when I told him what Alexis had just told—and shown—me. I had expected him to instantly plunge into denial, to immediately deny all charges against the council ... or at least to call Alexis a flat-out liar.

What I did not expect him to do, however, was to stare at me in shock for over two minutes. I'm serious. I counted the seconds.

"Excuse me?" he asked finally, his eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"

I couldn't help but feel slightly nervous as he stared at me; he can have a really creepy gaze when he wants to. "Um, I met a girl in the children's ward who says that the council is evil and that they are coming to steal her mind?"

This time, it was only about three seconds before he burst into laughter. Really. He started laughing. I stared at him in horror; I couldn't think of a single thing that would be worth laughing about in the situation at hand.

"You're joking, right?" he asked, laughing so hard that tears were escaping his eyes. "I mean, you're not serious!"

I just looked at him.

His laughter faltered slightly. "You-You're not laughing," he said, choking slightly on a gulp of air. "Why-Why aren't you laughing? It was just a joke, right?"

Internally, I sighed and felt very sorry for my cousin. He was clearly unable to comprehend what had just happened.

"Hunter," I said firmly but quietly, making a conscious effort to sound comforting but forceful at the same time, "I'm not joking. Alexis really did tell me that, and she's not lying."

He had completely stopped laughing now. Instead, he was staring at me with a vivid concentration that chilled me. His eyes were wide and gaping, and he suddenly looked very pale.

"You're lying," he whispered.

It was my turn to stare at him in horror. He thought that _I _was _lying _to _him_?

"Hunter, I have _never _lied to you!" I said angrily. "Never! Maybe once when we were little and I accidentally dropped your stuffed dinosaur down the toilet, but never since then! Why would I lie to you, Hunter?" I asked, my voice softening. "I wouldn't do that to you, you know that."

His green eyes were frozen in space; the look of shock had not lessened one iota.

"No," he said. "No, you are. You _are _lying. Or joking. If this is your idea of a –"

"_You think I'm joking_?" I had yelled that, apparently so loud that Bree from inside Morgan's hospital room—Hunter and I were engaged in verbal battle outside her walls—felt the urge to open the door and check if everything was all right. I pulled the door shut again without further ado; I suppose that it could have been the reverse equivalent of slamming it in her face, but I was too angry to care at the moment.

"_You think I'm joking_?" I repeated, my voice barely above a growl as I glared at Hunter. He looked slightly frightened now. "You think I'm joking about this? Hunter, you _know _me. I don't make stupid remarks and expect a laughing response from them! I'm not Robbie!"

"Hey!" Robbie's indignant voice sounded from inside Morgan's room. I ignored it.

"Hunter, I could not be more serious if I tried," I said forcefully. He wouldn't understand, but he _had _to. Alexis was sure correct when she said that Hunter would react differently than I did. "Alexis showed me, Hunter, she _showed _me! We did a tath meanma and –" A thought occurred to me as I heard an outraged gasp from inside Morgan's hotel room. "No, Raven, that is _not _a sexual thing." I turned back to Hunter. "She showed me her life. She's spent all of it running from the council and they've finally caught up with her. We have to get her out of here."

"What the –"Hunter burst out, his frustration finally bursting over the surface. "Sky, you barely know this girl! All of a sudden, everything that she says is right?"

"I know that she's telling the truth," I said firmly. "The council is evil, Hunter, and they're after her."

"I don't believe you!" he burst out violently. "How _can _I believe you? She _has _to be lying, Sky! The council isn't evil, I work for them!"

I then did something that is generally frowned upon in the witch community: a tath meanma treise lámh. That is to say, I literally forced my thoughts into his mind and made his viewing of them mandatory. I guess it's sort of like mental rape, but not. Because, um, ew.

We were watching the scenes that I had first viewed in Alexis's room together in bits and pieces, images flashing by us in a whirl of color and sound coupled with other threads and visions of memories and feelings. He saw, as did I, men in dark suits striking a young woman so hard that blood spilled on the ground; she wanted to cry out, but didn't dare. He saw the sigil permanently burned onto her flesh, the rune that would pull her life away from her and destroy it. He saw her abandoning her daughter, unwilling to leave but knowing she must. He saw Alexis and I sitting together, locked in a tath meanma, and me watching the same scenes that we had just seen, I for a second time and he for an unfortunate first. And he saw, though it was clearer for me this time, the darkened room with two men, conferring about their options. They would finally get their prize, and they knew it. They would finally have access to the brightest mind that the world had seen in generations.

Hunter wrenched out of the mental connection so fast that I let him go out of surprise; I could have held him in otherwise, forced him to watch more, but he looked so ... stunned ... betrayed that I couldn't do it.

"Oh, my God ..." was all that he said. His voice was barley above a whisper and suddenly very scratchy.

"You see?" I whispered, breathing heavily with mental exhaustion. Two tath meanmas in under an hour ... I was lucky to still be able to process thoughts. "We have to help her, and I don't care what they might do to us. I'm not letting them have her."

His mind was stuck on the same track that it had been ten seconds ago. "Oh, my God ..."

"Hunter, please, I need you to concentrate," I whispered in desperation. "I need your help on this! Please, please concentrate!"

"Sky ..." he said weakly, his voice sounding more like a whine than anything else. I sensed something else in it, as well. Resignation. "Sky, we can't ... we just can't ..."

"Can't or won't?" I said harshly. He just cast me a desperate look. "Hunter ..." I sighed. "What would you do if it were me they were after?"

It was a low shot. He knew it. I knew it. But I needed to make him understand. If he didn't understand, then nothing would ever work.

He looked at me in internal conflict for a long time before sighing. "Anything ... anything to save you."

I raised my eyebrows, and he finally caved.

"All right," he sighed. "Okay. Tell the others what's going on." He paused. "Can she walk?"

"I don't think so," I said. "She's been working with a therapist, but I don't get the impression that she's strong enough to escape."

"Then we'll need to create some sort of diversion," he said, turning and walking down the corridor towards the main lobby.

"Without anyone seeing us?" I questioned.

"Concealment spells all around," he said firmly, not turning back to look at me.

I stared after him. "Hunter, where are you going?"

"To the main supply closet. I've got a plan, but we'll need Robbie to carry out most of it. Go explain to the others."

As he disappeared around a corner, I had little choice but to sigh and follow his instructions.

_Sometimes I stare out my window  
__My thoughts all drift into space  
__Sometimes I wonder  
__If there's a better place_

Morgan, Raven, Bree, and Robbie reacted pretty much the same as Hunter had when I told them about what Alexis had told me about the council, although I guess they were a little less into denial about it. After the initial shock wore off, they stared at me—I was getting tired of people doing that—in wonder.

"I can't believe it," Morgan whispered, her eyebrows furrowed. "How can they be evil? Or, how can _some _of them be evil?"

"_Animal Farm_," Bree said promptly.

Raven, Morgan, Robbie, and I stared at her. She looked embarrassed.

"Well, it's true," she said. "In _Animal Farm_, don't you remember how the pigs took over the farm and then how badly they treated the other animals? If you're in a place of high power, chances are you're going to become corrupt in some way or another. I guess the council is the same."

We nodded slowly, pondering this for a moment.

"So what do we do?" Robbie asked finally. "I mean, we can't just leave her here. They'll get her."

"I don't know what to do," I sighed. "Hunter said that he has a plan, so we can only hope that it's a good one."

Ironically, the Hunter in question chose that moment to make his reentry. He was carrying what looked like a bundle of green hospital robes in his arms.

"Um, Hunter, what are those?" Morgan asked in confusion.

He looked down at them. "I borrowed these, if borrowing means stealing, I guess." He followed that slightly disturbing speech by pulling an empty wheelchair into the room through the door. Simultaneously, five pairs of eyebrows shot up. Hunter just looked at us. "What? We can use this to wheel her out, and Robbie can pretend to be an intern."

"Why can't you wheel her out?" Robbie asked, suddenly sounding nervous. "What if they know I'm not a real intern?"

"I can't wheel her out because Sky and I will be on hand casting glamour spells and concealing spells to make sure that they _think _you're an intern. And Morgan, Raven, and Bree will be around the back pulling the car up to the main entrance."

"Wow, you've really thought of everything," Bree said in respect.

"Yes," I said, standing up. "The more difficult part will be making sure that everything pans out correctly. Should we go to Alexis's room now?"

"Sooner the better," Hunter said simply. Suddenly, he was very calm about this. "Robbie, here's your outfit." He handed Robbie one of the robes.

"Meet me in room 375," I said, stepping out of the room. "Bring the wheelchair, and the rest of you get to where you're supposed to be."

I paused, then turned around and stared at Morgan, who been out of her hospital robes already and dressed when I came in for the second time. "Oh, God, Morgan, I completely forgot about the spell stuff! Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said with a smile. "Hunter and I did a mini-breaking spell with a ton of chanting. It'll help until I can get back to the lodge and break the spell fully."

"Spell?" Bree asked, looking between Morgan, Hunter, and I. "What spell?"

As I left the room, I heard Morgan begin to explain what she had done to the others. Robbie left the room soon after I did and headed for the bathrooms to change into the intern's robes. I took a deep breath to steady my increased heart rate.

"Let's hope this works ..."

_Where do fallen angels go?  
__I just don't know  
__Where do fallen angels go?  
__They keep falling_

"What do you mean?" Alexis asked in confusion, a conceivable response to my statement of 'We're getting you out of here'. "If they see you –"

"I don't care."

"If the council finds out –"

"We'll deal with them," I said firmly. "I'm not leaving you here for them to find."

A small flicker of something appeared in her eyes for an instant. Was it hope? In a moment, though, it disappeared. "I can't walk."

"That's okay," I said, pulling back her bedcovers and helping her sit up on the side of the bed. "My friend is going to bring you out to our car, okay? Then my cousin and I will create a diversion so that they can drive out to the entrance."

Robbie, clad in bright green robes that pained my eyes to look at, poked his head in through the door. "Sky? Are we ready?"

"Yeah, Robbie," I said. "Come in." I looked at Alexis. "Alexis, this is Robbie. Robbie, Alexis."

"Hi," Alexis said simply.

"Pleasure, malady," Robbie said with a mock bow as he pushed the wheelchair over to the bed. Alexis grinned. "I will be honored to aid in your escape."

Alexis turned to me, and I saw that her face was alight with a mixture of both excitement and fear. "Are we really going to do this?"

"We are," I said with a nervous grin.

Unfortunately for our escape plan, a nurse chose that moment to enter the hospital room. "Miss Rody, your father called and said he's about ten minutes away. I'd expect he'll be up to see you in about an hour after he fills out some paperwork."

Alexis's eyes widened almost proportionally, and so did mine.

The council was coming. Now.

The nurse stared at Robbie in puzzlement. "Do you work here?"

_Yes, he does_, I said firmly in my mind.

"Yes, I do," Robbie said easily.

The nurse continued to look at him suspiciously for a moment but then nodded slightly and left the room.

"The council is here _now_?" Robbie asked instantly, his voice rising the second that she closed the door.

"I suppose so," I said quietly. "So we have to hurry."

Five minutes later found Robbie, Alexis, and I in the main lobby, I walking beside Robbie and he pushing Alexis in her wheelchair. I noticed Hunter sitting in a waiting chair, his face half-hidden by a parenting magazine, watching us intently. I gave him a small smile, which he returned.

"Where are you taking her?"

Robbie and I both whirled around to face a doctor in a white laboratory jacket, who was watching us curiously. My eyes widened, and I instantly began to chant in my mind. _He will believe us. He will believe us. He will believe us. _

"Her folks have just arrived outside," Robbie said smoothly, motioning Alexis with a wave of his hand. I could have hugged him; if I was the doctor, I would have believed him easily.

The doctor shrugged. "All right. Have you checked her out?"

"Um ..." Robbie's eyes widened slightly. "Yep, I did. One ... Alexandra Brody ready to go."

"Good," the doctor said pleasantly. "Carry on, then." He hurried off into the staff lounge as Robbie, Alexis, and I exchanged nervous looks.

"Nice play on the name," Alexis said to Robbie with a small smile.

"Hopefully, it'll be smooth sailing from now on."

And it was ... for a little bit. We managed to get out to the front parking lot where Morgan had pulled up the car that we had borrowed from, ironically, the council.

"Did you make it?" Morgan asked breathlessly as she hopped out of the driver's seat and ran to meet us at the sliding door.

"Yeah," Robbie said, struggling to push the wheelchair down a small step. "Geez, why doesn't this place have a ramp? It's illegal _not to _in the US."

"That's the least of one of our worries," I said irritably. "Can we focus on getting out of here?"

"I'm Morgan," Morgan said to Alexis, smiling at her as she helped Robbie move the wheelchair down two more steps.

"Alexis," Alexis said. "But you probably figured that out." Suddenly, her eyes widened. "Sky!"

"What?" I asked, twisting my neck to look at her and then around the parking lot. She was staring at a red subcompact car that had just pulled up in a parking space about ten feet away from us. Two middle-aged men, both wearing business suits, climbed out of the driver and passenger seat and slammed the doors behind them. Time seemed to slow down somehow as Morgan, Alexis, Robbie, and I stared at them; they didn't look at us, but walked into the hospital through the same sliding doors that we had just come out of.

"Who are they?" Bree asked from inside the car, clearly sensing the tension.

"The council," Alexis whispered.

"We have to get out of here before they see us," I murmured.

As Hunter ran out of the hospital a moment later, declaring that he had seen the council members and managed to leave without being noticed or recognized, he and Robbie lifted Alexis out of the wheelchair—which they then folded up and threw in the trunk for further use—and sat her in the backseat next to Bree and Raven.

"Sky, I'm scared," she whispered, her voice shaking.

"It'll be okay," I whispered, stepping into the backseat next to her as Robbie got in on the other side and Morgan and Hunter jumped back into the front.

"You! Stop right there!"

"Oh, my God," Alexis said in panic as the two council members ran back out of the hospital, staring right at our car.

"You'll be okay," I repeated, my heart racing. "Drive, Hunter!"

With a loud skidding sound, Hunter stepped on the gas pedal and the council's own car rushed out of the parking lot and onto the long, windy, heavily-forested road outside; looking over my shoulder through the back window, as the others were doing, I could see that the council members had gotten into their car and were tailing us not too far behind. It suddenly occurred to me that we were barely going forty miles per hour.

"Hunter, why aren't we going faster?"

"They're putting a spell on the car or something!" he groaned, fiddling with the gas pedal and the ignition. "It won't speed up faster than this!"

"They're going to catch us!" Bree yelped, staring in horror out the window. "They're only about fifty feet behind us!"

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh –"

"You'll be okay," I repeated to Alexis for what felt like the umpteenth time, feeling much less certain that she, or we, would be. Suddenly, however, I was struck with inspiration. With a simple mental incantation and a small air sketch, the council car almost skidded off the road as a blue Volkswagen materialized out of the forest and nearly crashed right into them.

"Wow," Raven said after a moment. "What in the name of everything holy was that car doing there?"

"That wasn't a car," I whispered. "That was a glamour, and one that they'll see through almost immediately."

"They've been distracted," Hunter said, keeping one eye on the speedometer and one on the car behind us. "The spell they were casting before is broken."

"You don't think they put a watch sigil on the car, do you?" Morgan asked in fear.

I shook my head after briefly casting out my senses and mentally scanning the car. "No, I don't think so. It requires contact, and I can't sense it."

"How could you sense it if it could be concealed?" Bree asked in confusion.

"If you're aware of the presence of something, you're much more likely to sense it," Alexis explained. I gave her a small smile.

"Oh," Bree said.

"Um, Hunter?" Raven was looking out the back window again. "They're catching up again."

Simultaneously, everyone in the car turned their necks to look out the back window. She was right.

"Crap," Morgan whispered.

"Hunter, turn left," Alexis said suddenly, her voice much more steady than it had been two minutes ago.

"What?" Hunter said in surprise, pressing his foot down on the gas pedal harder.

"Turn left!"

"There's no road!"

"There's a mountain road up here that will lead us back to town," she said hurriedly. "It's so overgrown with weeds that I doubt anyone knows about it."

"Where?" he asked, scanning the mountainside that we were now speeding by. "I can't see it—oh, yeah, but you can, can't you?"

True to Alexis's word, a small, overgrown road in the valley between two hills appeared, shrouded by weeds and tree leaves. As Hunter turned the steering wheel to pull onto it, I hurriedly began casting another glamour, one that would hopefully keep them thinking that we were still going down the main road.

"Did we lose them?" Morgan asked hurriedly, craning her neck, as the car was jostled uncomfortably by the rough gravel path of the forest road. I looked behind me and saw the council members' car go speeding by the turn onto the forest path.

"I think so," I said, my heart hammering painfully.

"Thank you," Alexis whispered, looking at me through her dark eyes, which were shining with a happiness that I had never seen in them before.

"Don't thank me yet," I murmured, still watching out of the back of the car.

Somehow, I could not shake the feeling that we would be paying for what we had just done.

_Well, the times are frightening  
__Can't ignore the facts  
__There are so many people  
__Just slipping through the cracks_

**HUNTER'S P.O.V**

Apparently, Sky's glamour spell had done the trick because we didn't see a trace all the way back to the lodge of the council car that had been tailing us. As the doors of our car flew open, Robbie, Morgan, and Sky set about setting up the wheelchair again and I rushed around the exterior of the lodge, drawing runes of concealment and hiding all over every surface I could find. As soon as Alexis was safely inside the lodge, Morgan and Sky joined me, and together we scoured the exterior of the lodge, putting layer upon layer of spells on it so thickly that chances were no one would even notice it when they walked down the street.

When we trooped back inside the lodge—Morgan still making inappropriate jokes about how she couldn't find the door—the first thing that I did was call Kennet on one of his many cell phones, not the one that I had borrowed. He answered on the second ring, indicating that he had recognized the number.

"Giomanach? What's wrong? You're emanating fear."

I paused. Was I really? That was scary.

However, it was not as scary as Kennet's reaction was to my accusation that the council was evil and had just chased us out of the Antrim hospital. After complete silence on the other end of the phone line for at least three minutes, the tone of his voice was so cold and so harsh—crueler than I'd ever heard him talk to anyone—that I shivered slightly.

"Never say that, Giomanach."

"Kennet, I swear that it's true –"

"I don't care if it's true!" he screamed, so suddenly that I jumped and held the phone away from my ear. "It might be true; I don't know, but _never_ say it aloud."

"Why?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Because they'll find out," he whispered. "I've had my suspicions about their motives for years, Giomanach, but do you think I ever said anything? Don't you think that there was a _reason_ that I never said anything? The men that are up there in the council, Giomanach, the ones in real seats of power ... they don't care about people like your ataxia girl. They don't care about people like you or me. The only ones they care about are themselves, and that's never going to change."

My head suddenly hurt so intensely that I rubbed my forehead with a groan. "Kennet, if you knew, why ... couldn't you have at least warned me?"

"Because saying it would have made it true," he said, sounding strained. "And I cannot face that, Giomanach, I simply can't. I have built my life around the council, and I will not allow it to fall to pieces. Now, I'll get the medicine that you wanted for your friend, but ..."

We had realized in the car that Alexis's enzyme supplements that were necessary to keep her nervous system in balance were left at the hospital as we hadn't risked actually signing her out. None of us were willing to return to the 'scene of the crime', so to speak, and so I'd asked Kennet to would-he-please do it for us.

He sighed, a deep, resigned sigh that instantly filled me with apprehension. "Giomanach, I think that it's time that you do two things. These are the last two things that I'll ... probably ever ask you to do. And I hope you listen to me."

My throat was dry. "What are they?"

"Consider yourself out of a job," he said, firmly but with a deeper unhappiness than I could measure. "Don't worry about the council coming after Sky and the girl because that would mean that they would have to admit that they a) did something wrong and b) don't have the purest intentions to do good. What they're banking on now is that you two aren't going to babble on them and let the whole witch world know what they're up to. But don't underestimate them. They may yet make you sorry that you helped Rody escape."

"What's the second thing?" I asked, a little more coldly than I perhaps should have.

"Leave Portrush. Do yourself a favor and get out of here."

"We can't," I sighed, running a nervous hand through my hair. "We can't. The trip from the hospital tired Alexis out a lot. She's ... she couldn't travel, I don't think."

"Well, then, you'll need to find a way to fend for yourselves here," Kennet said, and I was struck by the detachment that had become present in his voice. "I'm sorry, Giomanach, but that's all that I can say to you. I'm sorry."

How had this happened? How had, so suddenly, my entire vision of who I worked for and who my colleagues were shattered?

The little beep that let me know that he had hung up was like a slap to the face.

_So many ashes are scattered  
__So many rivers run dry  
__Sometimes your heaven is hell  
__And you don't know why_

**SKY'S P.O.V**

When I walked into the lodge room on the first floor that we had given to Alexis, she was sitting upright in bed, propped up by pillows, and staring ahead of her, her eyes unfocused.

"Why the long face?" I asked, attempting a note of cheerfulness in my voice. "I brought chicken soup."

"I was just wondering about my mom," she whispered, not looking at me. "She must have known that they would find a way into the hospital someday. Why did she leave me there?"

I sighed and set the warm bowl of chicken soup down on the bedside table.

"She wanted you to be safe when she couldn't protect you," I whispered, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to Alexis. "She wanted to make sure that she was leaving you in good hands."

"But she didn't," Alexis said quietly, looking at her hands, which were clasped together tightly. "If she wanted me to be safe, why didn't she stay with me? I was safest with her!"

"I know you were," I said softly, brushing back a strand of her hair. "But she couldn't stay with you. You know that. She did all that she could for you."

"Before they took her away." Alexis's voice was hard. "They took her away from me."

There was something in her voice, something quiet and unspoken, that made me look at her with something similar to wonder in my eyes.

"You never cried for her, did you?"

She didn't say anything for a long time before slowly shaking her head.

"No. That would have made it too real." Her voice hitched slightly. "If I didn't cry for her, then I could still pretend that she was ..." Tightened. "That she was coming back for me."

"It's okay," I whispered, feeling tears coming to my eyes. "Don't think that it makes you weak, because you're not."

She whipped her head around and stared at me. There were tears shining in her eyes. "I'm not afraid of being weak! For the love of the Goddess, I'm a _cripple_! I'm not afraid of weakness!"

"But you're afraid that she really is gone," I whispered.

Alexis still stared at me, her eyes growing redder. Her upper lip quivered slightly, and I found a lump rising in my throat, as well.

"Don't think that you can't," I murmured, my voice breaking. "You think no one else ever cries?"

As tears began to slide out of her eyes, I pulled her to me and hugged her as she began to cry for real ... deep, gut-wrenching sobs that wracked her entire body. I couldn't do anything, couldn't say anything ... nothing but be there.

I don't know how long I sat there, being her shoulder to cry on; it might have been ten minutes or an hour. Her sobs began to subside after a while, and she looked at me through red and swollen eyes.

"I'm tired ..."

"I know," I whispered. "Feel better?"

"A little."

I helped her back underneath the covers and squeezed her hand lightly. She gave me a small smile, still sniffling.

I remembered a lonely night when I was young the evening after Linden died. Cara, Hunter, Alwyn, Shannon, Aimee, Chelsea (my other sisters), and I all slept on cots in Ma and Da's room that night. No one had wanted to be alone. No one had been able to sleep, so drained of tears and emotions, so Ma had sung to us.

"_Where do fallen angels go_?" I remembered her soft voice floating over me, stroking my hair as my tears soaked my pillow. "_I just don't know ... where do fallen angels go? They just keep falling ..._"

"_Can you hear me? Can you hear me_?" I whispered softly, recalling the notes from years and years ago. "_Somewhere out there, there's a shining light ... and I got to be with you tonight._"

Alexis's eyes closed slowly and she seemed to collapse into her pillows. I stroked her hair lightly.

"_And with all we're nowhere ... we still pay the price_," I sang quietly. "_The devil seems to get his way in downtown paradise ..._"

_Where do fallen angels go?  
__I just don't know  
__Where do fallen angels go?  
__They keep falling_

"_Where do fallen angels go?_" I wasn't leaving just yet. "_I just don't know. Where do fallen angels go? They just keep falling ..._"


	15. Something to Sing About

**Disclaimer**: Hmm ... what can be said about the previous chapter, "Fallen Angels?" Kind of felt bad for Hunter while writing it ... he seemed to get yelled at a lot. I guess that's okay, though, because other people get yelled at in this chapter ;) ... but that's not a good thing, I suppose. Anyway, follow standard fanfic procedure with this chapter: read it and then review it. It's quite simple, isn't it? :P The poem at the beginning belongs to a friend of mine. If you steal it, expect much badness to come your way (wink). The chapter is named after the song from _Buffy_'s "Once More, With Feeling," and the spell that is used later is from a website that I apparently can't write the name of and have it stick when I format the chapter ... so if you want it, e-mail me and I'll send you the link. BTW, I don't own _Sweep_. Once again. In case someone out there has forgotten. Luv ya and review!

**Summary**: Killian arrives in Ireland with a surprise in tow.

**Part XV**: Something to Sing About

_Eight seconds until I start to die  
__Eight minutes until I can see her eyes  
__Eight hours to wait for hell's embrace  
__Eight days to go until I can see her face  
__Eight months until the torment ends  
__Eight years until my life descends  
__Who would have ever known  
__That in the end you're all alone? _

**Morgan**

Sky and I had never been close friends; sure, we were in the same coven and we hung out at meetings and stuff and had been traveling around Europe with our friends, but I always found her a little introverted. She didn't seem to let many people know who she really was; I knew that from Hunter. In our traveling group of six, I knew that Raven and Hunter were the only ones that she felt completely comfortable around. Still, though, I couldn't help but feel badly for her when she appeared in the living room that night looking completely exhausted, her eyes red as if she had been crying. I worried that she might just have broken completely when Hunter, Robbie, and Bree rounded on her with angry yelling.

"Where have you been? You're the one who got us into this mess! You should be here to help us get out of it!"

"What are you talking about?" Sky asked, her voice quivering slightly as she wiped a remaining tear away from her eye. Raven, who was sitting across from me on the couch, bit her lip slightly but didn't move.

"How about you explain to us what we're supposed to do now?" Robbie asked angrily. "The council just tried to attack us!"

Sky's eyes widened. "What happened?"

"Oh, nothing," Hunter said airily, his tone bitingly sarcastic. "They just managed to slice through our outside spells and deliver a massive threat to our safety."

"A lot like Maggie," I admitted.

"Basically, if we squeal, we're dead," Bree said.

"That may be true," Robbie said sardonically, "but if we don't, we're dead, too! They're going to get us for this."

"We don't know that," I said firmly, casting a nervous glance at Hunter. He was staring at the floor; maybe he had finally noticed the look of abject misery on Sky's face and was suddenly feeling remorseful. "They might not do anything to-"

"Oh, sure," Bree said sarcastically. "We helped one of their top-priority projects escape and they're going to let us off scot-free. That's believable."

"She's not a project," Sky said through gritted teeth.

"No, she's just some random girl we barely know that we just _had _to rescue," Bree retorted, her voice steadily increasing in volume and her face growing redder. "We _had _to rescue her because, _of course_, the consequences would have been worse if we hadn't. I think we're dealing with some pretty damn awful consequences now, don't you? Look where we are! The council hates us and now we're going to pay because we tried to do _the right thing_! And, can I just ask, why her? Why Alexis? What, Raven not satisfying you enough?"

She seemed to realize that she had gone too far when everyone in the room's mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief. I found myself staring at her, too. Had she really just said that?

"That was uncalled for," was all that Sky said, her voice trembling with fury.

"All of it," Hunter murmured.

"Not all of it," Robbie whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "We're still in the same position we were in two minutes ago."

I sighed, staring around at the people that had so shocked me. "Guys, I know that this is a tough situation, but –"

"Morgan, tough is not being able to figure out a pre-calc problem," Bree whispered, her voice cold. "Tough is _not _being chased by powerful members of a witchcraft organization who want our blood! I think that qualifies as a little more than _tough_, don't you?"

"We have to stick together!" I said angrily. "Isn't this what they want? Us fighting and coming apart at the seams? Yeah, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place, but –" Bree snorted at my clichéd choice of language. I ignored her. "But if we keep fighting like this, there's no possible way we'll ever get out of this." I rubbed my eyes, suddenly feeling very exhausted. "What everyone needs is to get some sleep. We're been up and about most all day, and I'm about ready to collapse. I don't know about you guys ..."

"So, what?" Robbie asked, his voice hardening. "It'll all seem better in the morning?"

"Hopefully," I said simply. "If not, then ... we'll deal. That's what we always do, isn't it? We deal with the crap that the universe tosses at us because we don't have any other choice."

"Poetic," Bree said cynically.

"I try," I said, casting her a withering glare. "I'm ordering everyone to bed. Now."

It helps sometimes to be the shy girl that hardly ever gives direct orders. I think that the only reason my friends actually went upstairs and did as I told them to was because they were surprised that I had actually asserted myself.

Hmm. I'll have to bear that in mind.

**Sky**

"I'm sorry," Raven whispered, the first thing that she said when she closed the bedroom door behind her. "They were just ... when the warning thing happened, they were scared."

I looked at her in surprise. "And you weren't?"

"Not especially," she admitted. "Because, believe it or not, I do know you. You don't do something like rescuing Alexis if you're not sure that it's the best thing to do."

Somehow, her vote of confidence only made me more nervous.

"Do you think it was the right thing to do?" I asked softly. "Or do you think we should have just ..." I trailed off after that.

"You saw someone in trouble and you helped them," she said simply, brushing her hair in the full-length mirror standing beside the wardrobe. "It's not your fault that Bree and Robbie can't see that."

"It's not that they don't want to see it," I whispered. "It's that they don't want to. Maybe they just feel ... unprotected."

"Because they're ... _we're_ not witches?"

I stared at her. "You _are_ witches."

"Not blood ones. Not like you and Morgan and Hunter."

I sighed. "Maybe. I mean, Morgan and Hunter have each other, and –"

"I have you."

"Always will," I smiled. The pounding headache that I had felt downstairs had subsided. "Maybe one day they'll realize that _they _have us, too."

Tired of standing, I plopped down on the bed. Raven had said before that it was sort of lumpy, but it sure felt like heaven at the moment. She came out of the bathroom a few minutes later to find that I still hadn't moved.

"How are you not asleep already? You looked exhausted downstairs."

"I can't sleep without you. Now, unless you want me to become an insomniac ..."

She looked amused. "How did you survive when we broke up?"

"I was severely sleep-deprived for long periods of time. It didn't exactly help my mental state."

"Your mental state always needs help."

If I hadn't been too tired to lift my arm, I would have thrown a pillow at her. Somehow, though, I felt that Morgan had been right before; maybe it would all seem better in the morning. As corny as it sounded, I knew most people never found that one person, that one person who, when you're with them, makes everything seem better than it really is. Maybe that's not an overly healthy way to live, but for now, with Raven, things were just fine.

"Love you."

My response was probably too unintelligible to understand as I was too tired to attempt to actually form words, but I knew she understood.

**Morgan**

Perhaps in an effort to repair her friendship with Robbie and Bree, Sky was up before dawn—I heard the oven timer going off at 6:13—making breakfast. When Hunter and I arrived in the kitchen for breakfast, both still rubbing our eyes and yawning, we found the kitchen table laden down with plates of pancakes, waffles, and homemade pastries, and a large plate of donuts sat among three different types of syrups (blueberry, raspberry, and maple, respectively) and a humongous dish of fruit salad.

"Wow," Hunter said in shock, his mouth dropping open. He inhaled the scents of freshly cut fruit and homemade waffles deeply and sighed with a kind of abstract longing.

"Try the pancakes," Raven said from where she was sitting on the counter. "They're deliciously unnecessary."

Sky looked hurt. "You said you liked them."

"I do," Raven said. "They're the best pancakes I've ever had, coupled with the honey buns and cinnamon rolls and –"

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Sky grinned, pulling her into a kiss. "Mmm ... you taste like syrup."

Hunter and I just smiled, and I picked an orange out of the fruit bowl on the counter, tossing it into the air and jumping as the oven timer rang.

"Start eating," Sky ordered us as she opened the oven door and pulled out a tray of muffins.

"Muffins!" I said happily ... and proceeded to burn my fingers trying to pull one out of the tray. "Ow!"

"There's a reason that we set the tray down to cool, Morgan," Raven said, grinning as she dished herself up a bowl of fruit salad.

Hunter and I sat down at the table, which was literally groaning under the weight of the food.

"It all looks delicious," Hunter said appreciatively, helping himself to a heaping plate of pancakes and spooning strawberries over them.

"It _is _delicious," Sky clarified. "I've been up since six making all of this, so Bree and Robbie had better appreciate the gesture."

I frowned. "What they said last night really bothered you, huh?"

Sky didn't say anything for a long time. "I just want them to know that I feel really bad for putting you guys through this."

"You have to stop beating yourself up," Raven said firmly.

"She's right," Hunter said through a mouthful of pancake. "It'll just take them some time to get used to ... well ... our new situation."

"I'm surprised it didn't take you longer," I said pointedly, watching my boyfriend sternly.

"I realized that there are more important things at stake than my feelings towards the council," he said easily, reaching for a biscuit.

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with Hunter?" Raven asked in amusement.

"I'm going to bring Alexis something to eat," Sky said from the door, where she was about to leave with a tray of assorted breakfast foods in her hands.

"Looks more like some_things_," Hunter grinned.

Sky just scowled at him. "If Bree and Robbie come down while I'm gone, be sure to mention who made all of the food."

"Will do," I said, grabbing a waffle and drowning it in butter.

**Sky**

"Are you awake?"

"Yeah. Come in."

I pushed open the door to Alexis's room, careful not to drop her breakfast tray.

"I come bearing yummy breakfast treats," I grinned. She sat up in bed eagerly.

"Mmm ... food. Gimme."

I had barely taken two steps inside her room when she suddenly held a hand up and cried, "Stop!"

I paused. "What?"

"Put the tray down _very _slowly."

"On the floor?"

"Yes."

"Um ... all right." I did as I had been told. "Why did I just do that?"

"Because you would have tripped over my shoe otherwise," she said, smiling sheepishly at the shoe that was lying in my direct path.

"Oh," I said, embarrassed. "You saw that, did you?"

"It would have been really funny," she said quickly, "but I decided to spare you the humiliation."

"Thanks. You're such a friend."

"I know."

As I handed over the food tray, I looked at her curiously. She had brushed her hair with a hairbrush that Bree had loaned her, and with the absence of the makeup that she had been wearing at the hospital, her face glowed with a childlike radiance. It made her look younger, and I was struck with a sudden sadness that a girl so young, barely sixteen, should have to live with such a crippling disease.

She would get better with us to help her. At least, I hoped she would.

"How is it?" I asked, watching eagerly for her reaction.

"I've lived off hospital food for two years," she said semi-incomprehensibly, as her mouth was full of pastry. "This is heaven. I have found salvation at last."

I just grinned modestly. "Happy to help."

My mind began to wander as she continued eating with nearly inhuman speed and gulped down her orange juice. She had said before that she was working with a therapist and was making progress. Her enzyme supplements had been helping, as well. If she continued with her therapy, taking enzyme supplements, and maybe eased herself back into magick again, she would heal a little faster than usual. I remembered what Hunter and I had found on one of our many investigations of the lodge. On the upper floor, there was a conference room at the end of the west hallway. Most of the chairs and tables had been pushed against the wall and covered in sheets, so it was largely empty. Maybe we could use that somehow ...

"Hey," I said after a moment. "Feel up to some yoga after breakfast?"

She stopped chewing rather abruptly. "Um ... Sky, I know you're a super-genius and all and I hate to say this, but you might be having what's commonly known as a blonde moment. Confined to a wheelchair, remember?"

I shook my head. "But it could be like a continuation of your therapy. We don't have to do any of the complicated stuff, just simple movements. Getting you used to using your muscles again, things like that." I raised my eyebrows hopefully. "And maybe a little healing magick?"

She still looked slightly wary. "I don't know ..."

"What harm could it do?" I asked. "At most, it wouldn't help. But it'd work, I'm positive."

She looked close to agreeing when a soft knock on the door made us both turn and look at the door, where Morgan had just appeared.

"Hey," I said. "Are Bree and Robbie up?"

"No, they haven't come down yet," she said. A concerned look crossed her face. Um, listen ... I just got a witch message."

"From whom?"

"Killian."

My mouth dropped open in shock. Morgan squirmed slightly and suddenly looked very uncomfortable.

"He wants to know if he can come here. He's in Dublin right now. He says he has something he needs to tell me."

"Something that he obviously couldn't tell you in a witch message?" I asked coldly.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "But would it be okay? Please? He said himself that he wouldn't stay very long."

"Why do I have a feeling that Killian's definition of 'not very long' could be up to thirty years?" I said sarcastically.

"Sky, can you put aside your issues with him for once?" Morgan asked, sounding a little irritated now. "Please? It won't be very long, I promise. Plus, whatever he has to tell me might be important."

I sighed. Somehow, I doubted that. But I didn't really have a choice. "Fine, fine. Tell him he can come." I narrowed my eyes. "But if he makes any trouble at all –"

"You have my permission to fry him with witch fire," Morgan said quickly, smiling. "Thanks, Sky."

"No problem." I suddenly found myself hoping that he _did _cause trouble somehow. It would be sort of fun to 'fry him with witch fire'. I had certainly wanted to several months ago.

As Morgan left, Alexis looked at me curiously, a bit of fried egg halfway to her mouth.

"Who's Killian?"

**Morgan**

"Goddess, where are Robbie and Bree?"

After having messaged Killian back with the affirmative and returned to the kitchen to tell Hunter and Raven of Killian's imminent arrival—neither was exceptionally pleased—I stomped over to the foot of the staircase and yelled, "Hey, guys, come on! It's ten o'clock already, and I _know _you're not still sleeping."

In fifteen minutes, they still hadn't come downstairs.

"Talk about holding a grudge," I muttered to Hunter. "They must be really pissed off at Sky."

He nodded solemnly. "That must be it. They're awake, I feel them when I cast out my senses ..."

"Same," I said. "Should I try to talk to them?"

He shook his head. "No, leave them be for a while. Maybe they need some time to work through what's going on."

I sighed. We were coming apart already. How would we ever survive if the council decided to take action against us somehow?

Suddenly, however, I looked out of the window in front of the kitchen table, which showed a view of the unkempt back yard of the lodge. I could have sworn that I saw something move out there. It as just a glimpse, but ...

"What is it?" Hunter asked, looking at me in confusion.

"Nothing," I said, still looking curiously out the window. "I just thought I saw something."

He looked out the window, too, and I could feel him casting his senses out.

"Hmm ... I don't sense anything," he said. "Maybe it was just a bird or something."

"Maybe ..."

Long after Hunter had moved off into the living room, I still found myself staring out the window in the kitchen, searching for something. Something that probably wasn't there. What had I seen?

**Sky**

"So because he stole your girlfriend away, you slept with him?"

"Well, when you say it like that –"

"It wouldn't make sense no matter how I said it."

"Oh, shut up."

The conference room was in better shape than I had remembered it to be; all that I had to do was move two chairs to clear out a large space in the middle of the room. It hadn't been used recently, but the floor was still dust-free. Unfortunately, I had left the only yoga/meditation mat that I had back in New York, so we were stuck on the hardwood floor.

At the moment, Alexis and I were sitting in the basic meditation pose, just breathing deeply and grounding ourselves. I smiled as I felt Morgan approaching outside.

"Are you guys doing yoga?"

"Sort of. Want to join?"

"Sure."

After about five more minutes, I was still in a semi-trance when I heard Morgan whisper something in my mind.

_Look. _

Alexis was no longer sitting on the ground. She was ... levitating. Maybe floating would be better. Hovering about a foot off the ground, she didn't even appear to be aware of it. Her face was calm and expressionless, her breathing steady and even.

_She's strong_, Morgan whispered. _It was months before I could do that. _

I nodded. _She must have been so powerful before the ataxia activated ... _

Alexis opened her eyes suddenly. "Okay, what are you guys saying about me?"

We just raised our eyebrows and looked at her with half-smiles on our faces. She continued to look at us in confusion for a moment before suddenly looking down at the ground, realizing that she was floating in mid-air, and gasping.

"Stay calm," Morgan said quickly, holding up a hand. "No sudden movements."

Alexis made a nervous noise in her throat somewhere between a laugh and strangled cry.

"That's easy for you to say!"

"Just keep doing what we were doing before," I said soothingly.

She still looked anxious, but closed her eyes and forcibly calmed herself down after a moment. I looked at Morgan.

_We were going to do a healing spell. If we can do it now ... _

_That'd be best, I think._

"Ready for the spell?" I asked Alexis. She opened her eyes again.

"Am I still ... um ..."

"Yes," I grinned. "You are still floating in midair."

"Wonderful. Just wonderful."

I turned to Morgan. "We set up the spell stuff beforehand, so ..."

"Send me what we have to say."

"Of course."

With Alexis still looking nervously at us, we sat down on either side of her and, having previously meditated, both took a deep breath. I handed Alexis a bowl of water necessary for the healing spell, which I had found in one of my old Books of Shadows. The three of us, once again sinking into a deep meditation, were to charge the water with healing energy and ask it to hold the energy until we needed it.

I reached into a field of white light, and I felt Morgan and Alexis doing the same. All of us pushed the energy into the bowl, and I felt rather than saw Alexis's hands tremble slightly as a tiny ripple moved across the surface of the water.

"_Healing energy flows into this water_," the three of us whispered together. "_flowing from Her sacred well._"

Alexis handed me back the bowl, and I could feel the energy trapped within the water. I smiled to myself. It would still be there when we needed it.

I handed her a tall green taper in a candle holder, which we had dressed with tea tree oil. Its wick twitched and suddenly burst into bright yellow and orange flame; I looked at Morgan, who smiled at me. Alexis looked at Morgan, stunned by the display of power.

"Your power, too," Morgan whispered.

Alexis held the candle and chanted softly to herself.

"_We call forth light in the name of right_," she whispered. "_to heal my plight with strength and might_."

I could smell cooling lavender incense; even though we hadn't lit any, didn't even have any with us, its essence was there. Green light surrounded us, as clearly as if we were in the middle of a calm forest clearing. We saw Alexis walking without anyone's help again, traveling without a wheelchair, being able to laugh and play like she used to ... she used to run a lot when she was little, had even been on a junior track and field team in the summers, and she had loved it. We saw her running again, free from the constraints that her disease had imprisoned her with.

"_Alexis, you are healed,_" Morgan and I whispered together. "_Alexis, you are strong_."

Alexis wrapped the green candle in two cords: one of red and one of green.

"_Surrounded by a ring of jade, encircled by the healing waters_," we whispered, "_bound together by cord of blood, strength restored and life ­­_-"

The three of us stopped abruptly. The green light around us had suddenly disappeared, and I suddenly felt cold. As if someone had just turned the thermostat down about forty degrees.

Morgan was looking at me. Alexis was looking at the candle. Its flame was suddenly dying. It flickered weakly for a moment, and then went out completely. The wick curled in upon itself, black and burnt.

An eerie silence had settled upon us. We had been about to say the last word of the spell, the word to release the energy, and something had stopped us. I shivered suddenly and violently; why was it suddenly so cold?

"What's happening?" Alexis whispered, her voice barely audible.

"Something stopped us," Morgan said, her voice quietly afraid. "Something stifled the energy. Look."

She was staring at the bowl of water. Or rather, what was once the bowl of water. There was no longer any water in it.

"There's nothing in the circle," I said softly, casting my senses over the room. It felt cold, dead, lifeless ... Morgan and Alexis were both afraid.

"Aah!" I snapped my head back around in time to see Alexis fall from her foot-high vantage point in mid-air; she fell back to the ground with a loud thud and immediately grimaced.

"Ow ..."

"Are you all right?" I asked immediately, rushing forward to help her sit up.

"Yeah," she whispered, her voice tight with pain. "Just landed on my back. I'm okay."

"I want to know what just happened," Morgan said, looking between the two of us. "This morning, I thought I saw something outside the kitchen window. And, not to mention, a second ago, it was freezing in here. Now, it's fine. Does it feel fine to anyone else in here?"

She was right. The temperature had gone back to normal.

"Did something invade the circle without us knowing it?" Alexis asked, her voice shaking.

"I don't know," I murmured. After a moment of thought, I looked at her and Morgan. "Come on, let's get you downstairs. We probably shouldn't do this now."

**Morgan**

The rest of the day passed in a sort of haze. Bree and Robbie had not made an appearance downstairs by noon, and finally Sky stomped upstairs, apologized at length, and stood outside their door for nearly two hours until Bree, out of sheer irritation, finally decided to swallow her pride and face her coven mate again. Dinner that evening was an uncomfortable affair, partially because I think that Bree and Robbie had issues with Alexis eating at the table with the rest of us. Sky and I couldn't be more pleased in that respect, though; she was able to get around the lodge all right as long as someone is there, supporting her with one arm. I guess the healing spell might have begun to work, after all.

However, the fact remained that Sky, Alexis, and I were still confused at what had happened in our circle. We had told Hunter about it, but he had failed to come up with an answer short of something really had entered our circle without us knowing it. I shivered every time I thought about it; I had never really been exposed to astral spirits before. I knew that Sky and Hunter had, what with Linden's death, but it was completely new territory for me. Horrifying territory.

The only thought that he had was that it might have been something that the council sent after us.

My heart had been beating at twice its normal rate for three hours. It couldn't be healthy.

Sky, obviously still feeling guilty, had taken Robbie and Bree into town for homemade custard after dinner. Hunter was upstairs talking to Uncle Beck on the cell phone that he hadn't had to give back to Kennet yet. Raven and Alexis were watching _Scream 3_ in the lobby, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing my hands up and down my arms in an attempt to keep warm; it was freezing in there.

I looked at the thermostat control next to the sink. It read 77 degrees.

What was –

"Morgan!"

Raven's terrified voice had cried my name from out in the lobby. I jumped out of my chair, my heart hammering.

"What is it?"

"Something's wrong with Alexis!"

When I ran into the lobby, I saw that Raven was right: Alexis was lying on her back on the couch, and convulsions and spasms were wracking her body in sudden, violent bursts. Her eyes were wide and rolled back in her head as a particularly vicious convulsion ripped through her. Raven was standing in front of her, staring at her in horror.

"What happened?" I gasped, staring at the scene before me.

"I don't know," Raven said, panicked. "She said she had a really bad headache and then she started convulsing!"

"You're paying."

Raven and I both stared at Alexis. She had spoken, so suddenly and in a voice so not her own that we gasped.

"You're paying for what you did." A harsh, raspy voice full of hate was ringing in our ears. "You helped the girl escape, and now you're paying. She's going to die."

"No," Raven whispered.

"She's going to die, and you can't save her!"

"No!" I screamed, unaware that I had even wanted to shout. "No, she's not!" I grabbed Alexis's shoulders and started shaking her violently; her eyes weren't her own. They were wild and crazed, unseeing. "_She's not dying! _Do you hear me? She's not dying!"

A soft chanting was filling my ears. I didn't know where it was coming from; all I knew was that something was inside Alexis, and I wanted to kill it. I wanted to get it out of her before it killed her.

"She's not dying! She's not dying! There's nothing wrong with her!"

"_We cast out the unclean spirit_!"

The chanting in my ears stopped suddenly. Someone else had spoken those words. I looked around the lobby suddenly, my breathing coming in sharp gasps. Raven, staring at me through wide eyes and kneeling in front of Alexis, who was lying on the couch. She was unconscious.

My brother was standing in the doorway of the lodge.

I had never been so glad to see Killian MacEwan in my entire life. His tanned face was red with exertion, and he was breathing heavily.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked in the European accent that sounded like pure music to my ears.

"I think so," I whispered. I looked at Raven. "Are you –"

"Yeah."

"Is she –"

"She's out, but she should be fine."

I turned my gaze back to Killian. "What did you do?"

"I got a witch message from your friend Athar," he said simply. "Said something invaded your circle, didn't know what it was, thought that it might have been something that the council sent after you. I did a little research and came up with a way to ... cast it out, like I said."

"Sky sent you a message?"

He nodded. "Must have killed her to have to do so, but she did. I suppose it paid off." He narrowed his eyes and scrutinized me. "Are you really all right, sis? You look a little ..."

"I'm so confused," was all that I whispered.

"It's gone, though, right? It's not coming back?"

Who had said that? It wasn't Raven, Alexis, Killian, or I. Who else was here?

"Yes, it's gone," Killian said in a low voice. "Won't be coming back, either."

I realized who had spoken. A figure had appeared behind Killian in the darkness flooding into the lodge from the outside street. A tall, well-built teenager with a mop of curly blonde hair and green eyes even more vivid than Hunter's stood behind him. He was wearing a black jacket over black pants and a dark blue shirt; a chain of silver hung from his neck, and on the chain was a miniature dagger, its silver shining in the light of the chandelier, and a Druidic-looking blade, sharper than any knife that I had ever seen.

"Who are you?" I whispered, suddenly feeling that the words were not adequate.

Killian looked uncomfortable and glanced quickly at his companion. "Um ... Morgan ... this is Mike."

Mike. Who was –

"He's ... he's our brother."


	16. Eternity

**Disclaimer**: Here's Part XVI ... still don't own _Sweep_. Darn. We're working on that, through (wink). Read and review or we may just have to rip your arms off. I guess that's an empty threat, but review all the same. Hehehe ... the quote at the beginning comes from the _Angel _episode "Home." The song is Heather Nova's "It's Only Love." A random rambling: does anyone else think that Amy Lee from Evanescence would make a good Raven? The idea suddenly occurred to me while I was writing the beginning of this chapter. Feedback in the reviews! :P

**Summary**: Morgan and Killian begin to unravel their past after meeting another paternal half-brother.

**Part XVI**: Eternity

_**Flames wouldn't be eternal  
If they actually consumed anything**_

**Raven**

"E-Excuse me? What did you say?"

Morgan was staring at Killian with a kind of mesmerized awe on her face, and her eyes darted to the guy standing behind him, partially cloaked in the shadows. He was looking at Morgan in undisguised interest, and when she looked at him, I could tell that she was partially unnerved by his penetrating gaze.

"What did you say?" she demanded of Killian again. "We don't have another brother. You said that it was just your siblings. You said that they were the only other ones." Her voice sounded accusatory.

"I was wrong," Killian said simply.

"What's ..."

Alexis was starting to come to. I looked at her anxiously.

"Are you okay?" I whispered, semi-afraid to disturb the scene occurring between Morgan, Killian, and Mike ... her other brother?

Alexis looked at Morgan, who was still staring towards the doorway. "Yeah, I'm fine, but what's –"

"I'm not sure."

"Mike's mother lived in New York City," Killian said, looking between Morgan and said Mike. "Da ... um, Ciaran, we believe, was not ... completely faithful to my ma. He had an affair and ..." He sighed.

"I came into being," Mike said with a slight shrug.

It was then that I began to suspect that hanging out with witches as powerful as Morgan, Hunter, and Sky was having an effect on those of us that weren't Wiccans by blood. I sensed, rather than felt, a familiar presence running down the street outside the lodge, and, much to everyone's surprise, Sky, closely followed by Robbie and Bree, burst through the door behind Killian as Hunter ran down the stairs from the upper floor.

"What's going on?" Sky and Hunter both immediately demanded. As the newcomers looked at the lobby scene in front of them, however, Sky's voice grew weaker.

"Okay ..."

Bree was looking at Mike, her eyebrows narrowed. She turned to Morgan. "Who is this?" She looked at Mike. "Who are you?"

Killian looked at them anxiously. "Um, this is Mike. He's –"

"Killian," Morgan said sharply, glaring at him, her face set. "May I see you in the kitchen, please? Alone?"

Killian, clearly noticing the coldness in her voice, had little choice but to follow his sister into the kitchen. Morgan promptly shut the doors behind them, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she was probably putting up blocking spells as I considered the possibility that she was.

"What is going _on_ in here?" Sky asked, a note of weak desperation in her voice. "A moment ago, I reached out back here and all I felt was terror. I've seen _Scream 3_, and it wasn't _that _frightening." She approached the sofa, looking back and forth between Alexis and I. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Alexis said shakily. I just took Sky's hand and rested my head on her shoulder.

"Yeah, we're okay."

"What happened?" Bree asked, looking at Alexis, who had shifted herself into a sitting position.

"Council thing," she said simply. "It possessed me, and that guy –" she pointed to Mike "- and his friend got it out. That's pretty much it."

Sky looked at the blonde teenager in suspicion. "Who are you?"

"I think we've established that his name is Mike," Robbie said.

"Yes, but –"

At that moment, Morgan slammed the kitchen doors open again. She stared around at us all, silently daring us to ask what was going on, before pointing at Mike.

"You. Don't answer any of their questions."

She glared at the rest of us.

"Don't _ask _any questions."

_I used to think that I knew what we needed  
I just assumed we would always be fine  
Now I don't think that we lost the feeling  
But we let everything build up inside_

**Morgan**

My mind was spinning so quickly that I was having trouble distinguishing between thoughts. Killian was my brother. Yes, that was true. Next thought. I had another brother named Mike. Okay. It's a weird thought, but I guess it might be true. Next thought. Killian had brought Mike, my other brother, to Ireland with him. In person. Now _that _was what I was having trouble with.

"How _dare _you come down here without telling me about –"

"Morgan, you're allowed to be angry," Killian said quickly, holding up his hands in a vague effort of self-defense. "Furious, even. I should have told you what was going on earlier, but there isn't really a good way to tell you something like this easily."

"Oh, what, that I have another brother?" I yelled. "Like it wasn't hard enough finding out the first time!"

"Morgan, I had no one else to turn to!" Killian said angrily. "Where else was I supposed to go? Who else could I have told?"

"Maybe I didn't want to know," I growled. "Maybe things were complicated enough in my life without finding out about my extended family."

"Immediate."

"How many more are there?" I cried, throwing my hands up in the air in exasperation. "How many _other _kids has Ciaran had? Any more that I should know about?"

Killian just sighed; he looked exhausted, but I was strangely devoid of pity. "You can't pretend that this isn't happening, Morgan. Something is brewing out there and we need all the help we can get. Mike has powers, damn strong ones. Somehow, magick transferred from Ciaran's blood to his. It's a rare case, but not nonexistent."

I nodded slightly, thinking of one of our fellow coven mates, Alisa Soto, back in Widow's Vale. "Yeah. I know." The anger that I had felt towards my brother was ebbing slightly; instead, I was filled with such an extreme tiredness that I was surprised my legs didn't collapse right then.

"Listen ..." Killian looked at me anxiously. "He ... he needs somewhere to stay for a few days. I'm not sure how long it'll be, but ..."

"You want _us_ to take care of him?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

Killian looked reluctant to give me the affirmative, but nodded his head slightly. "I have some business to take care of in Cork, and it might be dangerous for him to tag along."

I tilted my head to one side slightly. "What kind of business?"

"Does it matter?" he asked sharply. "Magickal business, that's all that's important."

Something that he had said earlier was tugging at the back of my mind. "What was that you said before about something 'brewing' out there?"

As I looked at him, he glanced at me uneasily. "It's nothing concrete, just ... stirrings, whisperings. Dark magick has been on the rise in the British Isles and the rest of Europe, so ..." He sighed and ran a hand quickly through his hair. "I need somewhere safe for Mike to stay. It might be overly protective, but I need to know that he's safe."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. This was definitely a side of Killian that I had never seen before. I knew that he cared about me, his little sister, but I had never seen him acting so ... brotherly?

"You care about him a lot," I said quietly, more of a statement than a question. He nodded. "You feel responsibility for him."

"I can't explain why, but ... I suppose I do." He looked at me, his eyes begging me to understand. "You don't know what he's been through, Morgan. I know that you've been through awful things, magickally and personally speaking, but he's been through ... things that neither of us can imagine. His mother died when he was seven, and he's been shuffled from foster home to foster home ever since. He's never really had a family. I suppose I feel inclined to give him what he should have had." He gave me a wry smile. "I mean, at least I had my ma. Life was never simple, you know? But it was semi-acceptable. You, too. Even if they weren't related to you by blood, you've always had a family that cared about you. He hasn't."

I swallowed. "This is a lot to ask, Killian."

"I know," he said simply. "All I need is a yes or a no. If it's a no, then I'll take him with me. I don't want to and it'd be safer for him to stay here, but if you want me to, I'll take him with me."

I sighed in agitation. "Killian ..." I groaned, feeling the ripples of a massive migraine starting to pound my head.

"Hey, it's okay," he said quickly. "I'll ... take him with me."

I shook my head. "No, not if it's dangerous." I sighed, feeling that I would regret this decision later, but ... "Fine. Fine. He can stay with us." I shrugged. "We've been taking in a lot of people lately."

He grinned, and I couldn't help but feel slightly heartened by his broad smile. "Thank you, Morgan."

"It's nothing," I said nonchalantly, rubbing my forehead with the palm of my hand in an attempt to dissipate the imminent migraine. "Now get out of here and onto Cork before I change my mind."

_It's only love  
But love  
__Should make us strong  
It's only love  
But love has been hurting so long_

**Hunter**

I was at a complete loss for everything that had just transpired in front of me. There was a teenage boy, the identity of whom was unknown to me, standing in the lobby, under strict instructions from his _sister_—what was the situation with that, anyway?—not to answer any questions. Bree and Robbie just looked confused, Alexis had noticed the uncomfortable silence and was quiet herself, and Sky and Raven were just standing there, sneaking nervous glances at each other and, occasionally, Mike.

Mike was staring at the ground, not speaking, and toying with a Druidic blade that hung from his neck on a long silver chain. I scrutinized him, taking in everything from his mop of curly hair to his multi-charmed chains. I noticed that something indiscernible was hidden away in the pocket of his jacket.

"What's in your jacket?" I asked, perhaps a little more harshly than I should have.

He looked at me in surprise before pulling the object out of his pocket. It was an athame, and a brilliantly carved one at that. An entwined phoenix and dragon, carved from a deep black stone, were wrapped around an encircled pentagram, adorning the handle, and its two blades were made from silver steel. It radiated a sort of awing power, and I saw Mike's hand trembling slightly even as he held it.

"It used to belong to my dad," was all that he said.

"It's beautiful," Sky said quietly, looking at it with interest, as well. I caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. She just looked away.

The small click of the kitchen doors opening announced Morgan and Killian's arrival back into the lobby. Morgan's face was pale, and she was radiating agitation and confusion. Killian looked slightly calmer and even smiled as he looked at everyone else.

"Hello, all."

"Killian," was all that I said. Sky and Raven were silent, but I noticed the way that they both instinctively reached for the other's hand.

"Morgan," Bree said leadingly with a slight cough, nodding her head slightly towards Mike.

Morgan sighed. "Guys, this is Mike. Mike, this is Hunter, Sky, Robbie, Bree, Raven, and Alexis." She looked at him intently, and I could see a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. "And it's suddenly occurred to me that you're my brother and I haven't even said hello." She held out a hand. "Very pleased to meet you."

Mike looked at Killian with his eyebrows raised, as if asking if Morgan was for real.

"Hey," Morgan said sharply, still holding out her hand. "I'm Morgan. I'm your big sister. We have a father in common, I believe."

I heard the collective intake of breath, and I realized that I had gasped, as well. This boy in the lodge ... no wonder I had felt such a scorching sense of raw power from him. He was a son of Ciaran. I stared between my soulmate and her newly discovered brother in stunned confusion.

"Wow ..." I heard Raven whisper.

Mike looked hesitant for a moment but shook Morgan's hand after a long pause. Morgan examined him cautiously.

"You have powers," she said firmly. It was not a question, but a statement.

"He got them from our da," Killian said softly. Morgan glared at him.

"I'm speaking to Mike, Killian," she said with a slightly dangerous edge to her voice. She looked back at him. "What can you do?"

"Morgan, that's enough with the third degree," Killian said firmly, stepping between Morgan and Mike with a glare in Morgan's direction. "You're pissed at me. Don't take it out on him."

Bree spoke up from her spot near the door, where she and Robbie were just watching the scene in stunned silence. "Killian, are you staying the night?"

"Planning on it, yeah."

"I'll show you upstairs, then."

Robbie held up a hand. "I'll come, too." He and Bree all but ran out of the lobby, followed at a distance by Killian, who motioned to Mike to follow him. Sky and Raven quickly excused themselves as well and helped Alexis back to her room before fleeing the lobby as well.

"What are you feeling?" I asked Morgan softly as she stood in the middle of the room alone, looking around at the emptiness of the lobby.

"Nothing," she whispered. "I'm too tired to feel tonight." She looked at me intensely, and I was struck by the harshness of her stare. She was upset about something, but she was bottling it up inside. It wouldn't be healthy for her ...

"I'm going to bed," she said after a moment. A moment later, she had disappeared up the stairs.

I sighed and ran an agitated hand through my hair. The lodge was eerily silent and empty now. I collapsed on the couch, propped my feet up on the coffee table, and fell back against the cushions with an exhausted sigh.

What had just happened?

_What a challenge  
__Honesty  
__What a struggle to learn to speak  
__Who'd have thought that pretending was easier?  
__It's only love  
__But love should make us strong  
__It's only love  
__But love has been hurting so long_

**Morgan**

I had slept for about two hours when I went to bed. I heard Hunter come in around eleven o'clock when I was lingering between consciousness and sleep. He said goodnight, but I didn't reply. My mind was still stinging from the shock of the information that Killian had just shared with me.

If I ended up having one of my nightmares again, I swore that I'd kill something.

Fortunately, however, I'm not a naturally violent person, or several people would have died after the vision that I had while in a strangely pleasant dream involving the consumption of cookie dough ice cream.

Drums were banging in my ears. I looked around, but the same thing met me everywhere I turned my eyes. Deep brown, cracked, wrinkled skin that looked more like scales. Bulging, bloodshot eyes. Misshapen, jagged, yellow teeth that crunched together in hunger, in lust. Wide nostrils breathing putrid breath; it stung my eyes. White stripes down the side of the face. Looked like tribal paint or something.

I saw the way the hideous, disfigured creature looked at me, and I felt one heart-stopping moment of pure, blinding fear. The look in its eyes was hunger. It wanted to kill me.

My eyes shot open, and it took me over a minute to rid the monster from my sight. Its imprints hadn't faded in twenty minutes, and I lay in bed, drenched in a cold sweat, while Hunter dozed peacefully next to me. My heart was hammering, so quickly that it hurt. My hands were shaking, and not just because the room was cold. My breath came in short, uneven gasps, and my head pounded with a kind of intensity that I had never felt before, even when I had cast the no-dreams spell on myself. It was gone now, though. Hunter and I had gotten rid of it.

Now I was paying the price.

I didn't fall back into unconsciousness that night. The monster's visage, gnawing teeth, and enraged eyes flashed to me every time that I closed my eyes. I plodded down to the kitchen at four o'clock in the morning, rubbing my red eyes and intent on stealing some Advil from the medicine box in the pantry. I had already reheated three of the pancakes that Sky had made yesterday and gotten myself a Diet Coke before noticing that Mike was sitting at the kitchen table.

"Hi," I said in surprise, coughing slightly to clear my throat. "What are you doing up?"

He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. Thus, the oatmeal." He motioned the bowl of oatmeal that was sitting in front of him. I saw that he had mixed strawberry jam into it and couldn't help but smile.

I did the same thing.

Suddenly I felt guilty for my behavior the previous night. I _was _pissed off at Killian, but to take my anger out on Mike was nothing short of unfair. Mike hadn't done anything to me ... he couldn't help the fact that he had been born, I guess.

"You want to train after breakfast?" I said suddenly. "Before the others get up?"

He stopped eating his oatmeal in mid-swallow. "What do you mean?"

"Magick training," I said, suddenly feeling inexplicably nervous. "You know, learning to use your powers. It's like what I had to do when I first found out that I was a witch. Every witch has to have lessons." I raised my eyebrows hopefully. Maybe working some magick would help my psychological state, which was in desperate need of some repair right now.

"Um, okay ..." Mike said, sounding slightly hesitant. "I haven't really done that much before, but –"

"That's okay," I said quickly. "That's okay, because I will help you develop your powers so that you're as strong as I am."

Wow, where had that come from?

Mike was looking at me with a kind of amazed wonder on his face.

"This must be a complete 360 from yesterday," I said, drizzling syrup lightly over my waffle. "But I want to apologize. It was just a bit ... intense yesterday, you know?"

"I know," he said with a slight smile.

"So ... training?" I asked hopefully. "After breakfast? Meet me in the conference room upstairs?"

"Yeah."

I grinned, feeling mysteriously lightened all of a sudden. Then, suddenly realizing that I had nothing left to say, I gave Mike a hurried smile and rushed out of the kitchen. I fell onto the couch and immersed myself in early morning BBC programming, trying to clear my head of the terrifying vision and already forming a 'lesson plan' of sorts for our magick training.

_And it's all a part of me  
__It tears at my heart  
Only love  
And it's all an eternity  
__Hoping to learn  
Only love_

**Hunter**

When I had awoken that morning, Morgan was apparently already out of bed and awake. After a quick shower, I stepped into the kitchen to find Bree, Robbie, Alexis, and Raven eating breakfast at the table. Sky was sipping a cup of tea at the counter.

"Morning, Hunter," she said cheerfully. "I made some for you, too." She motioned a cup of hot tea on the counter, which I gratefully gulped down.

"What is it with Brits and tea?" Bree asked in mild curiosity.

"Just a cultural anomaly," Sky said, grinning.

I swallowed the last drop of tea in my cup and, while pouring myself another, asked, "Has anyone seen Morgan this morning?"

Robbie shook his head. "No, but I heard her walking down the hall talking to Killian right before he headed to Antrim for the day. I think she and Mike are in the conference room upstairs."

"What are they doing there?" I asked.

"She said something about training him," Robbie said with a shrug.

"Like, in magick?" Bree asked inquiringly. "What kind of 'training' could there be?"

"Learning to use his powers," Sky said. "Scrying, casting out his senses, numerology, runes, divination, all sorts of things ..."

"I should go check on them," I said, setting down my mug and about to leave the kitchen.

"Hunter, just let them be for a while," Sky said firmly. "They need this time to get to know each other. Last night wasn't the best time for introductions."

I sighed and cast my senses upwards towards the conference room. I could faintly hear Morgan telling Mike something about the difference between being a _blood_ witch and being a _responsible_ witch—clearly, a lesson that Killian had neglected to share with his younger brother.

"All right," I said reluctantly. "But if I sense any inkling of trouble, I'm up there immediately."

"Why would there be trouble?" Raven asked. "She's just showing him what it means to be a witch."

I didn't say anything, just cast an apprehensive look upstairs. There was something that pulled me up there, but I knew that to interrupt Morgan with concerns about her safety would only increase the chances that she would throw witch fire at me. There was something about Mike that didn't feel right, though, something about him that I didn't trust.

What was it?

**Morgan**

"So how does this work again?" Mike asked, examining the tip of his athame with interest.

I grinned. "It's easy, watch." I picked up my mother's athame and began tracing runes of protection, defense, and concealment in the air in front of me. Infusing the athame with light and magick, I felt its power creating a strong shield in front of me, the air rippling and bending to follow its tip. I smiled to myself. Working magick always cheered me up.

"Throw the orange at me."

"What?" Mike looked surprised.

"Do it. Don't worry."

He looked apprehensive, but followed my instructions and picked up an orange that I had brought up from the kitchen. He examined it for a second, looked at me in a "well, here goes nothing" sort of way, and threw the orange directly at me.

I instinctively took a step back and held my hands up, but I needn't have bothered. The orange met the invisible shield that I had just traced in the air and immediately ricocheted off it as if it had just hit the wall. Mike's eyes widened.

"Wow ..."

I grinned modestly. "Well, it's not like it didn't take me a while to get that. Hunter practically went insane with frustration trying to teach me how to build the shield up strong enough that it didn't collapse immediately. Ready to try it?"

He still looked uneasy. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "Completely."

I had found out earlier that Killian had already taken to teaching him the most basic runes and sigils, and with a little extra help, he knew all of the ones necessary for creating a magickal rune shield.

"Another eolh. Oh, and an ehwis next to the defense sigil. That spot feels weak."

With a shield in place that felt strong to the senses, I picked up the orange, which was lying looking slightly bruised on the floor, and tossed it lightly at the shield. As it sailed through the air towards him, I felt Mike mentally strengthening the wall of runes and sigils. I watched in anticipation as the orange hit the shield, wavered for a bit in midair, and fell to the ground. It didn't ricochet off the invisible wall, but it didn't go flying right through, either.

"Wow," I said in awe. "How much training have you had?"

Mike shrugged, a small smile appearing. "Not much. It was probably just luck."

"One lesson about magick," I cautioned, "luck will get you nowhere. You have to know what you're going to do and when you're going to do it." I felt awful giving him the same advice that I so hated to hear myself, but it had to be said. "It takes a lifetime to get to the point where you're powerful enough to repel any attack. Most witches never even get close." I cast an appraising glance at him and smiled. "But I think you can."

"Really?"

"Totally. Now let's try the shield again. If you picture it as flexible but unbreakable, it seems to help the rebounding a little more ..."

_And it's all a part of me  
__It tears at my heart  
__Only love  
__And it's all an eternity  
__Hoping to learn  
__Only love_

**Sky**

"What's wrong?" I asked Alexis, looking at her curiously as she sat at the kitchen table, giving herself a Tarot reading with a deck that she had borrowed from Hunter. Her face held a look of sour disgust.

"It's this reading," she said in frustration. "I'm asking for everyone's future, and all I get is the fool, judgment, and death. I've done it six times, and the same three cards always come up."

"Hmm," I said thoughtfully. "You know none of those things mean literally what's on the cards. You have to interpret them. For instance, the fool represents not letting yourself be overwhelmed by life's pressures. Judgment means that things will come to pass as you make them for yourself. And death ..." I shrugged. "New beginnings, the end of something only to mean the beginning of something else."

"The last time I got death was at the hospital," she whispered. "My mother died two days later."

I stared at her, suddenly feeling like I had just dug myself into a very deep hole. "I'm sorry ..." I said, stunned at my own ignorance. "I didn't know."

"It's okay," she said with a nonchalant shrug. She looked closer at me, and I shivered slightly under her piercing gaze. "It's okay," she repeated again, a small smile on her lips. "Things are better now." She looked sadly down at the Tarot cards. "I just wish I knew why I keep getting these three cards. They're not evil, maybe, but they can't be good signs, can they?"

"What can't be good signs?" Bree asked as she and Robbie walked into the kitchen, both eating pieces of toast.

"I keep getting evil omens with the Tarot cards," Alexis said, simply as if it were an everyday problem that one faced.

Bree's face instantly lit up, and I remembered that she had a penchant for Tarot cards. "Ooh, I love Tarot cards! Can I try with them? I might get something different."

Alexis shrugged and scooted her chair over so that Bree could pull another one up in front of the cards. She shuffled them up for a minute or two and concentrated for a long moment.

"What does the future hold for us?" she whispered, and dealt three cards from randomly picked places in the deck to place face-down on the table.

Alexis, Robbie, and I all held our breath as she began to lift the first card, and Alexis went pale as Bree read off the card's name written in Celtic print at the bottom.

"The fool."

Robbie shrugged it off, but Alexis looked at me fearfully. I looked quickly back at Bree as she began to lift the second card."

"Judgment."

Alexis was practically bouncing up and down in her chair in apprehension and nerves as Bree lifted the final card slowly. When they saw the winged skull adorning the card, both of their eyes widened.

"Death."

An uncomfortable moment of silence was broken only by Robbie's inquiries. "So, does this mean that one of us will make a stupid decision, go to court, be found guilty, and be executed?"

Bree snorted. "Of course not, dummy." Then she looked at me fearfully. "Does it?"

"No!" I said quickly as Alexis gingerly climbed out of her chair.

"That's it," she said firmly. "I'm borrowing Hunter's lueg and I'm scrying until I get an answer about this thing. I want to know why those cards keep coming up."

Even though I couldn't help but think that they were all overreacting to this, I nodded. "That might be a good idea. When in doubt, I suppose it's the smartest thing to do."

We met Hunter on our way out of the kitchen, who was returning an empty coffee mug. "What are you guys doing?"

"Alexis sees death, so we're going to scry," Bree said simply.

"_What_?" he asked, his eyes widening.

"We got some less than positive Tarot readings from your deck," I explained. "We're just going to scry and see if we can come up with anything concrete."

"Well, let me come," he said, surprised. "I want to help."

I looked at the others. "I guess we could do a group scrying session. Those are normally the most accurate."

Looks were exchanged; eventually, after getting consensus, the five of us trooped upstairs to Hunter and Morgan's room, cautiously lifted Hunter's scrying lueg out of its protective blanket in his suitcase, and centered it in the middle of the room. We had seated in a circle when Raven knocked on the door, which we had left open.

"Hey, guys. What are we doing?"

"Scrying," I said. I patted the ground next to me. "Come sit."

Bree scooted over to make room for her, and then Hunter coughed. "Okay. Morgan and Mike are still upstairs, so ... let's do this while we can." He cleared his throat and looked into the lueg intensely. "_We request that the Goddess and the God bless this scrying stone. We ask that all visions be pure and true, so mote it be_."

I'm not sure how long the six of us sat on the bedroom floor in a circle, staring into a deep black stone for answers that seemed stubborn in appearing to us. I snuck a quick glance at Hunter in confusion; he looked equally puzzled.

_I can't see anything_, he messaged to me. _It's not even like when Morgan and I used it once and the blackness of the stone was smoke. There's just ... nothing in there. _

I could tell that he was about to tell the others to stop trying, that we would try again later, when Alexis suddenly laughed.

Bree, Robbie, and Raven, all of whom had sunk into deep meditations, all started suddenly as Hunter and I stared at Alexis in shock.

She was still laughing, and her voice sounded deeper suddenly.

"Sad that you don't know," she whispered, her voice full of malice. "You don't know what can be prevented ..."

Five pairs of eyes focused completely on Alexis as she rocked back and forth slightly in place, still laughing under her breath.

"It's too bad, really," she muttered and stared down at her feet. "He was so strong, could have really been something ..." She laughed mournfully, ironically, bitterly. "Guess it just wasn't meant to be. It's sad, he was so strong ..."

"What's she saying?" Bree whispered to no one in particular.

"Something's not right," I murmured, a feeling of horror and shock spreading through me. "She's not ..."

"It's too bad," Alexis continued, fiddling with the Tarot cards that she had brought upstairs with us. She traced the design on one of the cards. Death. "Too bad that he has to be the catalyst for her downfall. Too bad. She was strong, and so was he ..."

I didn't understand what she was saying. Her words were becoming more and more unintelligible, almost as if she were a rambling patient in a mental health clinic.

"Whose downfall?" I whispered. "Who _is_ her downfall?"

She laughed again, a laugh of such pure and unrestrained delight that I shivered at the sound of it. "Him, of course! The strong one!"

She pointed to the lueg. Simultaneously, all pairs of eyes in the circle turned to look into the stone's murky depths.

Mike's face, crystal clear, looked back at us.

"Goddess," Hunter whispered, sounding horrified. "And she's up there with him right now ..."

I barely managed to bring down the circle before he split its boundaries and ran out of the room towards the western hallway.

_And it's all a part of me  
__It tears at my heart  
Only love  
And it's all an eternity  
__Hoping to learn  
Only love_

**Hunter**

How could I have ever been stupid enough to trust him in her presence? I should have known that something was fishy about him; I had been getting an aura of negativity and secrecy from him the moment that I had first met Mike. That, coupled with the fact that he was Ciaran MacEwan's son, did not make me very intent on allowing him to do whatever he was planning on doing to Morgan. If he wanted to steal her powers, as Ciaran had wanted to in New York City, he'd have to go through me first.

Mike and Morgan sitting in a hand-drawn chalk circle on the floor of the conference room with a burning cauldron of fire in front of them was, understandably, not quite what I had expected to see. I had expected to see Mike trying to strangle Morgan or forcibly remove her powers with magick or stabbing her with his athame. I hadn't expected to see them exchanging childhood memories.

"See this here?" Moran asked, pointing into the fire. I realized that they were scrying just as we had been doing not three minutes ago. What's more, they were scrying with fire, Morgan's choice element. "This is my kitty Dagda."

"He's adorable," Mike said, grinning. He pointed into the fire, too. "That was my dog Francesca. She died a few years ago. She got out of the yard and a mail truck hit her."

Morgan sounded sympathetic. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine anything like that happening to Dagda."

"What the _hell _is going on here?"

My voice sounded excessively loud even to my own ears. Morgan and Mike both snapped out of their reverie, and the fire in the cauldron instantly burned down. Morgan stared at me, stunned.

"Hunter, what are you doing? We were scrying!"

I stared back and forth between Morgan and Mike in stunned shock; Morgan looked angry, and Mike was watching her, occasionally looking at me.

Suddenly I realized the absurdity of what I had just done. Casting my senses over the room, I felt nothing out of the ordinary. When my senses probed Mike, I felt him instantly put up a strong mental block. My eyes narrowed and I longed to break it down, to find what he was really hiding, but I didn't. I knew that it would be more trouble than it was worth ... not to mention the fact that Morgan would probably toss the cauldron at me.

"Hunter, what are you doing?" she repeated, her voice cold and furious.

I kept looking at Mike for a moment before meeting Morgan's eyes. "Nothing. Nothing. Forget I came in here."

I slammed the door to the conference room shut behind me, and as I was walking, or rather stalking, back down the hallway, I met Sky running towards the conference room.

"What happened?" she demanded, coming to a halt in front of me.

I just shook my head. "I don't know, Sky." I sighed. "I really don't know."

_There's a part of you I'm trying to reach  
Still a part I don't know  
Tell me  
__Is devotion a gift or a thief?  
Do you wish I'd let go?_

Morgan seemed to have thankfully calmed down slightly from her earlier rage towards me. She didn't speak to me at lunch, but when the others went into town for a bit of shopping and clearly trying to get their minds off Alexis's incoherent babbling—she didn't know anything about what she had said and didn't even remember laughing—Morgan found me in the lobby, where I was browsing a recipe for potato pancakes in Portrush's local newsletter.

"Hey, Hunter, can I borrow your lueg? Mike wants to try scrying with it. Fire isn't really his favorite medium."

I sighed and didn't say anything. Taking my silence for the affirmative, Morgan began rambling to me, as she often does, about things in random and nothing in particular. This time, Mike was the subject of her one-way conversation.

"I know you might not like him, Hunter, but I see something in him that I can't explain. I mean, obviously I can't explain it because if I could, I would, but I don't think you can understand. I don't mean that in a negative way, but I just mean that you've always known people like Sky and her sisters and Alwyn for your whole life and you've never really had to deal with meeting someone related to you like that that you didn't already know existed. I mean, I didn't know that Mike existed before, which is pretty obvious, I guess. But I feel this connection with him, you know? Like he knows what I'm going through, what I went through when I first found out that I was a witch. Like, he knows it better than anyone. I mean, when I first met Killian, I felt connected with him and I couldn't really explain it until I found out that he was my brother, but there was always something missing, you know? Like, he didn't connect with me on the level that I connect with Mike. I guess I'm using the word 'connect' a lot, but it's true. I guess I'm sort of rambling, too, but only because I'm so excited to finally have someone that I can talk to about things like the shock of finding out that one is genetically magickal and –"

"Morgan, can you please stop?" I finally burst out. "I understand, all right? Mike is special and powerful and all knowing. Yada, yada, yada ..."

Damn Bree and Robbie. That's the last time that I let them force me into watching a 12-hour _Seinfeld _marathon on TBS.

Morgan looked surprised. "Hunter, what is with you lately?" she demanded, taking a step closer to the couch where I sat. "You've been really uptight, more so than usual, and you seem to have a real problem with Mike."

"Maybe I _do _have a real problem with Mike," I muttered under my breath. Unfortunately, I realized too late that Morgan's witch-enhanced hearing had probably picked that up.

She had. "What do you mean?" she said, staring at me. "You have a problem with Mike?"

I snapped. "Yes, I have a problem with Mike!" I yelled, grateful suddenly that he was upstairs and probably couldn't hear me, judging from the immense number of blocking spells that I felt on his door. "Do you want the truth, Morgan? I don't trust him! There's something about him that doesn't feel right to me!"

"How would you know anything about him?" Morgan responded angrily. "You don't even know him!"

"Neither do you!" I retorted. "You don't know anything about this guy!"

"Yes, I do!"

"Oh, what, that he's your brother? As if he couldn't be lying! Morgan, every time that I get near him he puts up about a million mental blocking and protection spells! I'm a _Seeker_! I know better than anyone that it's not a good sign!"

"Look, Hunter, if you have a problem with Mike, I'm just going to tell you to get over it! He's my brother and, like it or not, he has to stay with us for a while! He's not going to try to hurt me or anything!"

"How do you know?" I said desperately, almost fiercely. "What do you really know about him? Nothing! Everything that you've been told could be a lie, and you'd never know it because you're too busy worshipping the wonder that, in your mind, is Mike!"

Morgan seemed to be trying to forcibly calm herself down. "Hunter ... I love you, but I just don't believe what you're saying. I have no reason to doubt anything that Mike has told me about himself, and neither do you! For the love of everything holy, he's just a teenager! He's learning to use his powers just like I was!"

"Morgan ..." I sighed. My head was starting to pound. "I just don't trust him."

"Why not?"

"It's quite easy, Morgan," I yelled, feeling another burst of anger explode within me. "No one in their right mind would trust a child of Ciaran MacEwan!"

I realized my mistake the second that Ciaran's surname left my mouth. The stricken look on Morgan's face, one of pure shock, sent chills through me. All of the anger in the room seemed to disappear from where it had been on the point of exploding a moment ago. Now, all I felt was coldness. Silence filled my ears, a pressing presence that should not have been there. I couldn't believe the words that had just left my mouth.

"Morgan –"

The slamming of the lodge door as she stormed out told me point-blank that I shouldn't have bothered opening my mouth a second time.

* * *

**  
Author's Note**: How can I improve the story if you guys don't give me feedback? **Please** review and tell me what you think! 


	17. Revelations

**Disclaimer**: We own not the _Sweep_ series. I think that's pretty obvious. BTW, just as a general statement, we promise that the Mike in this story won't be as weird as the one in the parodies. While both characters are based on our same person (sends virtual hug to Mike), this one is a little less ... um, dark? The song belongs to Azure Ray. Don't steal it. Also, to make up for the obscene length of some of the previous chapters, I made this one a little shorter ... that's not to say that it's short. It's just ... shorter than our others. (cough) I command thee, readers, to review! Plus, if the length is really a problem, mention that in the reviews. I could always make them shorter (like, by 2000 words) so that the story goes on longer ... which wouldn't be a bad thing, I guess :P

**Summary**: A journey to the astral realms is the only way to discover the truth when Morgan sees something at the Ballynigel cemetery that doesn't look quite natural.

**Part XVII**: Revelations

_It's just a simple line  
I can still hear it all of the time  
If I can just hold on tonight  
I know that nothing  
Nothing survives  
Nothing survives_

**Morgan**

The wind stung and bit my bare shoulders as I stumbled down the rocky path leading towards Ballynigel away from Portrush. My feet ached; all that I had covering them were flimsy slippers. I was wearing a thin cotton tank top over a pair of old gym shorts, having stormed out of the lodge in my pajamas. I shivered violently and pulled my hair back into a ponytail against the storming winds to keep it out of my face. Why was the weather so harsh tonight?

It was cold, but I was too angry to notice the chill. Scorching, fierce anger still pounded through me, blinding and enraging, keeping me warm. I was thankful to at least have that. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I staggered down the road, my feet slipping over the rocks. My left foot slid over an especially large and jagged chunk of stone, and I looked down at it to see a thin cut spilling blood onto my slipper.

I didn't even feel it.

By the time that I was within view of the Ballynigel cemetery, I had similar cuts all along my ankles and feet. My slippers were bloodstained and ripped, but I wasn't paying attention to them. My mind was still on Hunter. Hunter, who I loved more than anything. Hunter, who had just betrayed me worse than practically any other possible way he could. Hunter, who had turned me into this.

A glowing light was visible in the horizon. At first, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination. My brain was dead with a lack of sleep; it took every ounce of energy that I possessed to lift my bleeding feet and take steps forward. I saw the light first as an illusion, shimmering in and out of sight, bobbing up and down. I followed its progress lazily with unseeing eyes, mechanically lifting my feet down the path.

It took some time for me to realize that I wasn't imagining the light, that it was really there in front of me. My magesight, inhibited by drowsiness and rampant emotions, wasn't adjusting as it usually would have, but I could see the faint outline of someone in the graveyard as I drew nearer.

The form's appearance grew stronger as I stepped onto the cool grass of the cemetery, sensing a strangely foreboding atmosphere in the whipping air. I stared at the figure, which was hunched over a grave, until I realized which grave it was.

It was my grandmother's.

He was digging it up.

I saw red. Instantly, the figure was on its back, clawing under my binding spell as I rushed forward, seething with rage. Was my mind processing thoughts? I didn't know and didn't care as I saw that whoever it was had made some good progress in his morbid work.

"Who are you? What are you doing?" I screamed at the figure, who was still trying to escape from the binding spell. I felt its own magick tugging at my mind, trying to make me lose concentration. It was strong.

As a patch of moonlight, tossed and turned by the roaring winds, illuminated the face of the gravedigger, though, I gasped and almost released it myself.

Deep brown, cracked, wrinkled, scaly skin. Misshapen, jagged teeth protruding from a grotesquely shaped mouth. Bloodshot eyes that I had seen not twenty-four hours ago in a vision while I slept.

It wasn't human.

I stared down at the monster from my dreams in horror, in shock. What was it? What was it doing here? And, once again ... what was it?

"What are you?" I demanded.

The creature, monster, whatever it was, pulled and twisted under the power of my binding spell, trying to break itself free. I mentally strengthened it and sent a jolt of red, fiery energy through the spell. The creature groaned in pain as its muscles seized up.

"_What are you_?" I demanded, more angrily this time, sending it back to the ground with magick as it tried to stand. "_What are you doing_?"

"You don't know anything," the creature snarled. Its voice, deep and scratching, stunned me, and I stared at it in shock. "You don't know anything!"

With that last bellowed cry, it ripped free of the binding spell with such a force that I stumbled backwards. Within seconds, my spell was gone ... along with its captive ...

I stared in shock after its form, which disappeared into the shadows beyond the wall at the back of the cemetery with such speed that I knew now for certain that it couldn't possibly be human. Not even Marion Jones could run that fast. Then the truth of the situation truly hit me. My feet were bleeding copiously and I was starting to get a little dizzy. My head ached.

What had I just seen?

_I think I'm turned around  
__I'm looking up  
__Not looking down  
__And when I'm standing still  
__Watching you run  
__Watching you fall  
__Fall into me_

**Sky**

"No, its nose was a lot flatter against its face. And its nostrils were wider. ... Not _that _wide! ... Yeah, that looks about right ... the nose, I mean. The rest of it needs a lot of work. The eyes are more bloodshot and the ears kind of curve at the top, plus the hair was a lot stringier and darker and its cheeks were sort of sunken and –"

Raven threw down her drawing pad with a sigh of frustration. "I'm doing the best I can, okay?" She looked disdainfully at the sketchpad, on which was drawn the supposed 'monster' that Morgan claimed to have seen on her visit to the Ballynigel cemetery. Morgan had ordered her to erase and redraw multiple times with an eraser not very well adapted for its job.

"Sorry," Morgan said apologetically from her spot next to Raven at the kitchen table. "It's just so ... hard to describe. It was so ..."

"Weird?" Bree suggested unhelpfully, wrapping a roll of gauze around Morgan's leg where she had cut herself on a jagged rock in the road.

"What happened here?" I asked quietly, looking at her intensely. "Hunter says you just stormed out."

Morgan snorted. "Well, that would be his explanation."

"And ... yours would be?"

She looked uncomfortable and stared down at her hands. "We had a fight about ... something. It's personal."

I nodded slowly, seeing how she might be uneasy about having to share why what had just happened had happened in the first place in front of everyone in the room. Bree, Raven, Morgan, and I sat around the table and Robbie leaned against the counter, looking at us with a worried expression. Hunter was conveniently absent; after Morgan had rushed out in a fury, he had disappeared upstairs and locked his door. I had tried to get him to come out, but he hadn't even responded to my inquiries.

"Morgan, are you sure that you actually saw something?" Robbie asked, his eyebrows slightly raised. "I mean, this is real life we're talking about. Things like this happen on TV. Demons running loose through the cemeteries, sure, that's commonplace on _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. But this is the real world."

"I'm certain," she whispered, looking at him and then back at me. "I know I saw something, Sky. It talked to me. I know that makes me sound crazy, but I wasn't imagining it."

I bit my lip. "If I could get a good picture in my mind of what this thing looked like ..."

Raven scowled, and I held up a hand before she could retort. "I'm not questioning your artistic finesse. Promise."

Morgan sighed. "I just ... I don't know how to describe it. It was so eerie, its voice was ... terrifying. _It _was terrifying. Like something ..." Her eyes lit up suddenly and she looked at me excitedly. "Like something in a nightmare! I forgot to mention that! I saw it in my dream! I had a nightmare yesterday and I saw it staring at me!" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Do you think the dreams predict the future? I mean, I thought it before but I never really believed it ..."

"Well, dreams often _can _predict the future, but that's not to say –"

"Sky, we finally have a lead here. Don't destroy it."

I glared at her. "Fine. But unless I know what the thing you saw looks like ..." I raised my eyebrows as an idea occurred to me. "Morgan, you know, sometimes things that look real are really just glamours cast by experienced witches. I mean, you saw what Killian did that night at the bar in New York. He fooled the bartender into thinking he was in his thirties, didn't he? It's not impossible for someone to have –"

"It wasn't a glamour," Morgan said testily. "I may not be that good at casting them, but I know that I could sense one. If it was just an illusion, I would have seen through it." She looked at me curiously. "Wait, didn't you do something to Hunter at the hospital in Antrim? Something that let him see into your mind so that he believed what Alexis showed you?"

I stared at her. "You mean a tath meanma treise lámh?"

"Whatever it was. Teach me how to do it so that I could show you the demon."

"I hope you realize that the word 'demon' in the witch world means a resident of one of the astral planes. Chances are, that's not what you saw."

"Fine. Monster. Non-human ... weird thing. Whatever! Just teach me how to do the tath meanma tree lamb thing so you can see it, too."

"No," I said flatly. "I have a better idea."

"What?"

"We could check the Akashic Records."

Alexis looked shocked. "What? Are you crazy?"

"I very well could be," I said seriously. "But I'm not joking. Chances are that if this thing was strong enough to break through Morgan's binding spell, we won't find it by scrying. I mean, hello, Woodbane prodigy here. Strong magick, remember? The Akashic Records seem like the perfect place to check for something powerful enough to escape that."

"What are the Akashic Records?" Bree asked curiously.

"They're ... just what they sound like," Alexis explained. "Records. Of everything. Every being to ever live, every being that _will _ever live. Every thought, feeling, emotion of every living creature has been documented."

"It's like the ultimate library," I added. "Past, present, future ... if you ever need to know the answer to a question, it'll be there."

"How can something like that exist?" Morgan asked, enthralled. "I mean, wouldn't people know about it? Wouldn't they use it for their personal gain?"

"Most people think it's just a myth," Alexis said. "And about the personal gain thing ... if you abuse the privilege of learning what it has to teach you, you won't be able to access your own records, which are the most important ones to everyone. Plus, it's just bad karma."

"And let me guess," Robbie said bitterly, "It's on another plane of existence. Some astral level inaccessible to those of us who aren't witches?"

"Actually, no," I said truthfully. "Both witches and non-witches have been accessing it for centuries, millennia, even. It's really hard to get to, but ..."

"What does getting there require?" Morgan asked, leaning forward on the table. "If we could do it, then we could find out what these monster guys are and what they're up to digging up my grandmother's grave."

I bit my lip slightly. "Well, to get there requires a deep trance. Generally ... the only way to get in deep enough without literally spending hours meditating is to ... take an herb drink that will help you get there."

If crickets actually chirped in real life during extended moments of silence, they would have been going crazy.

"Are you for real?" Bree said, her eyes wide. "The only way to get there is through _drugs_?"

"Not drugs," I said irritably. "If you mix certain herbs together into a tea or brew and drink it, they'll knock you out immediately. Then you're free to explore the higher astral realm."

"How do you know about this?" Robbie asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

"One of the things they tell you _not _to do when you're beginning magick training is access the Akashic Records," I said with a bitter smile. "It's too dangerous, it's too risky ..." I grinned slightly. "Of course, all of us tried it, but we weren't experienced enough." I shook my head. "But but I'd say that this qualifies as necessary."

"So this tea brew thing ..." Raven said, looking concerned. "There's no chance that it'll, you know ... kill you?"

"The plants will lose their affects after about an hour," I said evasively, "which should give us plenty of time to find the Records and get what we need." I sighed. "It's not completely risk-free, though. If the tea isn't prepared almost perfectly with the right amounts of everything ... even half an extra teaspoon of oleander could put someone in a coma."

"So ... who's going?" Bree asked. "All of us?" She must have noticed the uncomfortable look that I was positive was on my face because she grimaced. "Oh. _This _is the witch thing, right?"

"Not really," I said slowly. "It's just ... the chances of the brew negatively affecting the three of you is greater than it is for Morgan, Alexis, and I."

"Why?" Robbie asked.

"It's in our blood," Alexis explained. "Not physically, but our ... genetic make-up. Our blood is more able to handle potions and weird herb teas and stuff that normally isn't in it because our families for generations back have taken less-than-normal teas and brews for all sorts of things. Rituals, spells, you name it."

"There _is _a possibility for something to go wrong with this," I said quietly. "I wouldn't be willing to risk the three of you if it could be avoided with us."

After a long pause which seemed to take minutes to pass, Bree looked sideways at Robbie for confirmation, and Raven nodded slowly.

"Okay," Bree said after a moment. "But I'm monitoring everything you put in that tea. Make sure you follow the recipe exactly." She furrowed her eyebrows. "Wait, where _is _the recipe? Do you even have one?"

"It's in one of my old Books of Shadows," I said calmly. "One would think that herb teas would be Brightendale specialties, but this one is Wyndenkell. Remember how I told you once that my parents' coven is really old? Like, hundreds of years? It didn't start out in England; it started out in Germany in the 1400's. The height of the European witch hunts. After the coven lost a few members to the police investigators, they came up with the recipe to put them in a trance. It made whoever was under suspicion appear to be a corpse, and with glamour spells cast, the police believed they actually _were_ and left them for dead. The recipe has been passed down through generations just ... as a safety precaution, I suppose. In case a need for it should ever arise."

"What a fascinating tidbit of history," Morgan said sarcastically. "Turns them into corpses. Just what I needed to hear."

_Am I making something worthwhile  
__Out of this place?  
__Am I making something worthwhile  
__Out of this chase?  
__I am displaced  
I am displaced  
_  
Even though Bree conceded that I was an adept tea-brewer because of my English heritage, she refused to allow me to prepare the herb brew without her immediate presence. We sent Robbie and Morgan into town to the general store to pick up a couple generic household herbs that the kitchen was missing, and I broke into my personal stash of dried herbs to be used for spells and such that I had brought with me from New York. I found myself out of bloodwort and borrowed some from Hunter, who was still sulking in his room, after making up an excuse that Bree had gut-wrenching stomach cramps and required immediate attention.

I set the finished product, a teapot full of the near-deadly brew, down on the coffee table in the lobby. Morgan and Alexis sat in armchairs around the fireplace, and I could sense nervousness emanating from both of them in waves.

"You're sure she got it right?" Raven asked Bree worriedly.

"Positive. Although she had messy handwriting as a child, so that three might have been an eight ..."

"Sky _still_ has messy handwriting."

"I do not," I said impatiently. "Can we please do this? Oh, and remember, if Hunter comes down, tell him what we're doing but don't let him wake us up. He probably knows a spell to do that, and we might not have finished."

Bree poured the tea into three cups of equal servings, and Morgan looked at it distastefully.

"It looks just like normal tea. Funny how it's going to knock us out."

"Don't think like that," Alexis said, primly taking a cup and running her fingers over it to cool it down to a comfortable temperature. She looked anxiously at me. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," I whispered, holding the teacup apprehensively.

"Okay, then. On three," Morgan said quietly. "One ... two ..."

Alexis and I both swallowed our cups down on two. I nearly gagged at the bitter taste; I had never been a big fan of herb teas. Morgan glared at us.

"_Three_." She gulped hers down.

Bree, Raven, and Robbie looked at us expectantly. I raised my eyebrows.

"I don't feel any different. Do you?"

Alexis shook her head in confusion. "No, I thought that the effects would be instantaneous." Suddenly, though, she leaned back on her chair with a gasp. "Okay, now they're instantaneous ..."

I was feeling it, too. Lightheaded. Suddenly nauseous. I heard Morgan give a groan of pain.

The last things that any of us saw before blacking out were Raven, Robbie, and Bree's uneasy faces.

_And she's my friend of all friends  
__She's still here when everyone's gone  
__She doesn't have to say a thing  
__We'll just keep laughing  
__All night long  
__All night long_

**Morgan**

I snapped my eyes shut, more reflexively than deliberately, as a harsh glare of light burst out of nowhere and washed over me. I squinted, and I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a road. Yeah. A road. The weird thing was that the road was the only thing visible in a 360 degree spin. There was nothing below it, nothing above it, nothing to the left or right. It was a road out of time in the middle of an empty space leading somewhere that I couldn't see.

I looked around me but didn't see anyone. Where were Alexis and Sky? I definitely wasn't alone, though. All around me I could feel and hear things, whisperings and soft winds blowing past me. Other travelers through the planes?

"Most likely," Sky's voice came from behind me. I whirled around to see her and Alexis standing behind me on the road. I must have said that last thought out loud. "The things that are whizzing past us even as we speak ... we'll never know what they are."

I looked down over the edge of the road, the earthly asphalt it was made of not leaving imprints in my hands. "What's down there?" all I could see was what looked like a cloud. Above and below us. We were in our own little part of the astral realm.

"Who knows?" Alexis said rhetorically. "Probably a few things worth knowing. A few things that we're better off leaving alone."

I stood up and brushed myself off. My clothes felt lighter somehow, like they were made from clouds themselves.

"So ... where to now?" I asked. "Left or right?"

Sky smiled good-naturedly. "What feels right to you?"

I thought for a moment. "Right."

"Then right it is."

I couldn't say how long we walked down that empty road in the middle of a plane that wasn't, up until a year ago, supposed to exist. We didn't talk. There wasn't a need to.

"Is that a book?" Alexis asked suddenly, squinting at something in the distance.

What followed was one of the strangest experiences of my life. That's really saying something, considering that since Mabon last year, I'd experienced some pretty strange things on my journeys through witchcraft.

Suddenly we weren't standing about a hundred feet away from what appeared to be a book resting on a pedestal. We were standing right in front of it. I had barely blinked, not even closing my eyes all the way before we were there.

"Weird ..." Alexis whispered.

I wrinkled my nose. "So, is this it? Is this what we came here for?"

The book sitting on the wooden pedestal in the middle of the empty road was adorned with small drawings of Ken, the rune for knowledge, over its front cover, and a giant replica of the rune was embedded into the cover.

"Somehow I expected more," Alexis said. "A library, maybe. One with about forty dozen file cabinets."

Sky just reached out and opened the book to the first page. We all gasped simultaneously.

Our names were written in bold Celtic lettering on what should have been the title page of the book. SKY EVENTIDE. MORGAN ROWLANDS. ALEXIS RODY.

"Freaky," Alexis commented, flipping to the next page. "But where's what we're looking for?"

The next page, similar to the first one, had only one thing written on it in simple script.

_Diobhail_.

That was all it said.

"What does that mean?" I whispered. "It sounds like Gaelic."

"It _is _Gaelic," Sky agreed, looking a little apprehensive now. "It means 'destruction.'"

As we read the next page, I felt my own eyes widening and saw Sky and Alexis's doing the same. All of the whispers surrounding us, the remnants of magick left behind by astral travelers, seemed to quiet down and disappear. It was calm. Too eerily calm to be natural.

"Goddess ..."

_Am I making something worthwhile  
__Out of this place?  
Am I making something worthwhile  
__Out of this chase?  
I am displaced  
I am displaced_

**Sky**

I didn't have time to say anything or even breathe when, less than a second after I opened my eyes, Raven flung herself at me and effectively knocked all of the air out of my lungs.

"Okay ... can't breathe ..."

"Thank God you're okay, we were so worried, you were out for an hour and you said it wouldn't be that long –"

"An hour, huh?" Morgan said, and I saw that she was sitting up gingerly in her seat. "It definitely didn't feel that long."

"No," Alexis agreed. "Maybe time passes differently through the astral plane. Or not at all."

"But what we saw ..." Morgan was looking at me with a terrified expression on her face.

"What? What did you see?" Bree demanded.

I swallowed heavily. "Um ..." Alexis looked at me fearfully. "Well ... you know how it's said that the astral planes are home to more than just ... souls exploring it?"

"Yeah ..." Robbie said slowly.

"That ... thing that Morgan saw is one of those other inhabitants."

"What?" Raven looked stunned. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know, but ..." I shivered. "The Diobhail. That's their name. It means 'destruction' in Gaelic. They're not one of the infamous warring clans of the lower plane, but they're fiercely territorial."

"And occasionally prone to violence," Alexis added, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Try constantly," I whispered. "I suppose ... one _would_ call them demons." I gave a half-hearted smile. "You were right, Robbie."

"Demons?" Bree's voice was barely above a whisper. "Like, _Buffy _demons? Like, _Charmed _demons?"

"Not television ones. The real ones. The ones that aren't supposed to exist in this dimension, in this plane of reality. They are real, though ... many a traveler through the astral plane has heard their screaming, their yelling ... seen proof of their existence. They shouldn't be here.

"But ... for some reason ... they are."

"That means that something is wrong. Very wrong."

_It's just a simple line  
I can still hear it all of the time  
If I can just hold on tonight  
I know that no one  
No one survives_

_

* * *

No one survives

* * *

_


	18. Judgment

**

* * *

Disclaimer**: Don't own _Sweep_. Um ... what else is there to say? The song belongs to Evanescence and the quote belongs to Ambrose Redmoon. Does anyone else think the name sounds witchy? Anyway, read and review or you will be sporked to death! Mwahaha (this is not an empty threat, by the way).

**Summary**: Morgan attempts to decipher what she saw in the Akashic Records while the council plots revenge against Hunter and Alexis.

**Part XVIII**: Judgment

* * *

_**Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. **_

* * *

**Morgan**

I don't think any of us slept much that night. Robbie and Bree, looking shaken, had excused themselves to bed almost immediately after Sky told the others what we had seen when we traveled through the astral plane. I was still angry with Hunter even though my rage had ebbed slightly since returning from the cemetery; I snuck into our lodge room when he was asleep, grabbed my pajamas out of my suitcase, and took a room a couple down from Bree and Robbie's. The queen-sized bed felt huge, empty without him next to me, but every time I thought about him, my mind flashed back to what he had said to me before.

_No one in their right mind would trust a child of Ciaran MacEwan_!

And the rage returned. I sighed and tried to calm myself down enough to sleep, but I couldn't. Images of my visions kept tugging at the corners of my mind. The monster in the cemetery. Hunter yelling. Mike, the young teenager who didn't deserve to be dragged into our messed up lives. Killian, who hadn't returned from Antrim yet. Was he okay? Was _I _okay? Why was I getting those dreams? What did what we had seen in the book mean? We had seen the entire history of the Diobhail clan, spirits in the astral realm. What were they doing here? Why was I seeing them?

A sleepless night, coupled with the fact that I was still feeling slightly disoriented from our little adventure into the spirit plane, made for one monster headache the next morning. I took an Advil with breakfast; even though Sky offered to make me an herb tea to help with the migraine, I declined. The next time I touched one of those herb teas would be too soon for comfort.

Hunter plodded down the stairs to breakfast in an overlarge Manchester United jersey, yawning. When he saw me, he looked away. Bree watched us with interest, but when I glared at her, she looked back at her oatmeal quickly.

"Did you have another dream with the Diobhail in it last night, Morgan?" Hunter asked after a long, highly uncomfortable pause. I looked at Sky in incredulity. She looked conveniently innocent.

"What? I had to tell him; he might have known something."

"_Do_ you know something?" I asked Hunter, unable to help the edge that was obvious in my voice.

He sighed. "Not especially. It's nothing I've ever heard of before, but ... I suppose Kennet would know." He bit his lip. "Well, if I was allowed to contact him. It's best not to push when it comes to the council."

"By all means," Sky agreed. "They're pissed off at us, so we should stay away. But ... that leaves us in a stalemate, doesn't it?"

"Don't you have books about this?" Robbie asked. "Books about ... astral planes, stuff like that?"

Sky shook her head. "Not with me, no. In New York, yes, we have plenty, but not here."

"Is there any way to find a book like that in town?" Bree asked curiously. "I mean, I remember the music festival. Most of the people there were witches, right?"

"And council-involved," Hunter said with a groan. "They will have been warned to stay away from us. I bet the council probably made up some sham story about us being mentally unstable or something."

"So we've hit a dead end ..." Raven said with a sigh.

"It would appear so," Hunter said quietly. "We don't know what the Diobhail are up to, how they got here, what they want ... I suppose we could try to contact them, but ..."

"Oh, right," Sky said sarcastically. "I really got that they want to be our friends, considering what that one was doing in the cemetery."

Hunter looked chastised. No one spoke for a moment before the kitchen door burst open and my brother Killian walked in, looking unshaven and unkempt but smiling broadly.

"Hello, all!" he said cheerfully. "What are we up to this lovely morning?"

We just stared at him. He looked slightly put off.

"What?"

_Please, please forgive me  
But I won't be home again  
Maybe someday you'll have woken up  
And, barely conscious, you'll say to no one  
Isn't something missing?_

I knocked on Mike's door five times before he opened it, his headphones pulled halfway off his ears. He pushed the pause button on his CD player.

"Hey. What's up?"

"Just ... checking on you," I said, smiling. I paused. "Um, listen, there's something you probably ought to know ..."

I recounted the story of what I had seen in the cemetery and what Sky, Alexis, and I had discovered last night. He listened with rapt attention, his eyes widening when I mentioned what we had read in the astral book, and sank down on his bed when I was finished speaking.

"Are you okay?" I asked, concerned. He didn't look too well.

"Yeah," he said, an unnaturally light tone to his voice that instantly betrayed his lie.

"You know it's useless to lie to a witch, right?" I asked, a teasing smile playing across my face.

He sighed. "I just ... it's so weird, you know? One day you think you're just a normal guy, and the next you're learning about witches and magick and rune shields and scrying and now demons? What else is there I haven't learned about?"

"A lot," I admitted. "There's a lot I haven't learned about, either. I know how frustrating and scary it is, but ... it starts to make sense after a while." I paused. "Of course, there's very little that could make the concept of ethereal monsters make sense, but ..." I shrugged. "Got to take the bad with the good, I guess."

"I guess ..." he said after a moment. He continued to look down, and I quirked my head to the side.

"What else is bothering you?"

He didn't say anything, but I guessed that he was judging how to phrase his answer.

"And don't say it's nothing, because I'll know if you're lying."

He sighed. "I ... I heard you and Hunter talking last night."

I paused. Oh. That was bad. I bit my lip nervously and ran a hand through my hair, trying to figure out an appropriate response. 'Oh, we weren't talking about you.' Right, that wouldn't work. He had been mentioned by name.

"Mike ... Hunter is ... an interesting person," I said slowly. "A complex person, if you will. He ... he's met a lot of people in his life, and not all of them have proved trustworthy." I recalled how uneasy he had been around me when we had first met and I was still with Cal. The night that Selene had first introduced Hunter and Sky to us, I had felt waves of discomfort coming off of him. Of course, he _had_ been surrounded by people that he knew for a fact were dark witches, so ... "It makes him wary around strangers." Wait, was I making excuses for him?

"Doesn't matter," Mike said after a moment. "I've been getting that reaction from practically everyone I've met through Killian. 'What's his name?' 'Mike MacEwan.' 'Oh, he must be a dark witch. Let's shun him, everyone!'"

I sighed; this was nothing I hadn't heard before, and yet I felt sympathetic. After I had discovered that Ciaran was my father, I had felt the same way.

"It really sucks, doesn't it?" I asked quietly, sitting down on the bed next to him. "People hearing the word 'Woodbane' and judging us before they even know us ... it's hard at first. Unfortunately, you'll get used to it."

"If Hunter has anything to do with it, I won't get that chance," Mike said.

"Mike, his opinion of you doesn't matter," I said firmly. "He might not trust you, but you're my brother and _I _trust you. That's what matters." I raised my eyebrows. "Do you trust _me_?"

"This is the first time I've ever ..." He seemed close to completing his sentence before he looked down. "I want to believe you."

_He must have been through so much before I met him_, I thought dismally.

"Do you?" I asked quietly.

He looked at me. "I think so."

_You won't cry for my absence, I know  
You forgot me long ago  
Am I that unimportant?  
Am I so insignificant?  
Isn't something missing?  
Isn't someone missing me? _

"So what are we looking for, again?" Bree asked, wrapping her jacket tighter around herself and shivering as a particularly cold gust of wind slapped our faces. "And where is _summer_? It's July! Why is it so cold here?"

I smiled. "We're looking for a library, one, and two, I guess they do weather differently here in Ireland."

"Why can't we just ask someone where the library is?" Robbie asked, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

"Because, Robbie, in case you haven't noticed, everyone we've tried to approach has either made up some excuse or turned around and gone the opposite way." Bree sounded disdainful. "I don't get the feeling that they want to talk to us."

"They must know that all of us are in cahoots with Hunter," I sighed. "Unfortunately, I don't think we can expect very much help from anyone."

Sky had suggested that Robbie, Bree, and I go into town to look for somewhere, anywhere, that might have books on astral projection and residents of the lower planes. So far, our luck was minimal. We hadn't even found a townsperson willing to talk to us long enough to answer any inquiries as to where a library or magick store could be found.

"It's too bad the lodge didn't have a phone book," Robbie sighed. "That would have really been useful."

I snorted. "You think?"

Then I saw it: a small shop nestled between a grocery store and a pub with a small sign hanging off the wall. It read "The Witch's Circle Magick Shop."

"Bingo."

When we stepped into the darkened interior of the shop, I was met by the strong smell of spicy cinnamon and ginger incense. The layout of the shop was somewhat similar to Practical Magick's back in New York; while it was smaller, the entire back wall was covered with bookcases holding books of shapes, sizes, lengths, and colors. A display of multicolored candles was set up right next to the door, and I picked up one labeled "ocean scent" and inhaled. It smelled heavenly. Bree and Robbie, I saw, were examining a huge tub filled with different polished crystals and gemstones.

"Come on, guys," I whispered. "Let's get to the back."

It was oddly quiet in the shop. I even checked the sign on the door to make sure that it said Open, because I couldn't see a shopkeeper anywhere. Maybe the store had a back room like Practical Magick did, but I couldn't see a door.

When we approached the numerous book shelves, Bree whistled.

"Wow. This place has a better selection than even Practical Magick."

"Better never let Alyce hear you say that," I grinned. She was right, though. I had never seen such a wide range of topics and found myself wondering how all of the books that I could see could fit on the shelves.

"Alternative healing, astrology ..." I paused. "Wait, where's astral travel?"

"Look under Magick and Divination," Robbie said, kneeling down to look at books on the bottom shelf of a bookcase to my right. "There are tons of them here. They're mostly for beginners, though ..."

Bree and I both squatted down to join him. He, unfortunately, was right; most of the books on astral travel and out-of-body experiences were how-to guides for beginners. One book, worn and peeling, caught my eye, though.

"Well, what about this one?" I pulled it out and examined its leather cover, on which were embossed the words _Existence and Reality on the Astral Plane_.

"Is that name an oxymoron?" Robbie wondered as he and Bree looked over my shoulder.

I ignored him and opened to the table of contents, scrolling past 'Myths and Legends' and stopping at 'Creatures of the Astral Plane.'

"My friends, I say we've hit pay dirt."

"Quit making stupid puns," Bree said. "Open to that page and see what it says."

"I can feel the love in this room," I said sarcastically. I opened to page 54 and flipped through a couple pages. On the left side of the two-page spread there was what looked like a wood carving drawing of some kind of creature or animal, and the description for what it was and a little bit of information was on the right side. I stopped on page 71.

"That's it."

Bree and Robbie leaned in closer for a better look.

"Eww ... really? It's ugly."

"Bree, we have an ethereal monster on the loose," Robbie said in disbelief. "How can his outer appearance be your main concern?"

"Are you sure that's it?" she asked me, her voice low.

I just nodded, still staring, transfixed, at the drawing. It definitely depicted the creature that I had seen in the cemetery, but there was something different about it. Its hair was longer, its eyes bigger and more bulging, its general size larger.

"It's bigger than the one I saw," I whispered.

"Maybe the one you saw was a teen who missed puberty," Bree suggested unhelpfully. Robbie and I both glared at her. "No one can see the humor. No one but Bree."

"Bree needs to see reality," I said firmly, standing up while still holding the book.

"What else does it say?" Robbie asked, taking the book and perusing the page with writing on it.

I sighed. "Nothing we hadn't learned last night, just different phrasing. Basically, stuff along the lines of, 'if you invade their territory, they'll kill you.' Still, I'd like to buy it. Having a concrete copy of what we saw would be useful."

"But where's the shopkeeper?" Robbie asked, looking around.

"Right here."

I think that all three of us nearly jumped out of our skin ... literally. We whirled around to see Brighde Lachlan, the woman that Hunter and I had met who had invited us to the music festival about a week and a half ago. She smiled when she saw me.

"Oh, Morgan. It's a pleasure to see you again."

I was pleasantly surprised that she a) remembered me and b) was actually being nice to me. I remembered that Hunter said she worked for the council. "Yeah. I didn't know this was your shop."

"I don't own it myself," she said. "My brother-in-law is the proprietor, but I work here when I'm not on duty at the council building." She motioned the book. "That's a wonderful book. A lot of insight."

I nodded. "Yeah, it-it is. I was thinking of buying it."

"Well, they're already on sale for seven Euros, but I think we can cut you some slack," she said generously.

I looked briefly into my wallet; we all had to trade our money in for Euros when we arrived in Ireland.

"I only have six with me," I said with a frown.

"That's fine," Brighde said with a warm smile. "Come over to the register."

As she rang up my purchase, I smiled widely at Bree and Robbie but lowered my voice. "See? Not all council people are evil."

"How do you know her?" Bree asked curiously.

"I met her through Hunter," I said. "He helped her when her coven was having dark magick issues."

"Will that be all?" Brighde asked as she handed me the book in a paper bag with a receipt.

"Yes," I said gratefully. "It's nice to know this shop is here, though. We'll probably be back later."

She smiled at us as we left the shop. "Merry meet."

"Merry part," we responded.

"And merry meet again," she said cordially. _  
_

_Even though I'd be sacrificed  
You won't try for me, not now  
Though I'd die to know you love me  
I'm all alone  
Isn't someone missing me?_

"You told me to call if any of them showed up."

"Ah, yes, Mrs. Lachlan. Which ones?

"The Rowlands girl and two others."

"Not Rody?"

"No."

"What did they purchase?"

"A book about astral travel."

"Good ... can we assume that they don't know?"

"As far as I could tell."

"Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Lachlan."

"You're welcome. ... And you'll lift the curse on Moonrise? As we agreed?"

"Of course. The council sticks to its word."

"... Thank you."

_Please, please forgive me  
But I won't be home again  
I know what you do to yourself  
Shudder deep and cry out  
Isn't something missing?  
Isn't someone missing me?_

Neither Hunter nor Sky was at the lodge when Bree, Robbie, and I got back. Raven and Alexis were playing some German card game that Alexis had learned from a nurse at the hospital, and Bree and Robbie looked through the astral projection book while I watched.

"Okay ... because I played a Jack, I'll change it to ... spades."

"You just _had _to do that, didn't you? I don't have any spades."

"Tough luck."

"It says here that astral spirits are generally not as threatening on the astral plane but can be deadly if they manifest on the physical plane," Bree said, peering at the book.

"One would figure it'd be the opposite way around, but then, I never _did_ understand physics," Robbie said with a shake of his head.

"That still doesn't explain what they're doing here," I said, unable to help grinning as Raven exacted revenge for the spades by making Alexis draw six cards.

"So ein Pech," Alexis said unhappily.

"What now?"

"Bad luck."

We whiled away the rest of the day lounging around and wondering where Hunter and Sky had disappeared to. I tried messaging both of them several times, but I never got a reply. To say that I was worried would be an understatement. True, I was still furious at Hunter, but that didn't mean that I wanted him to go off and somehow get himself killed.

Finally, we got tired of waiting for them to show up and headed to the Italian bakery on Main Street for dinner; at night, they served entrees as well as took specialty orders. We ordered an authentic Italian pizza—or as close to one as we could get in the British Isles—and were about to order another one when Hunter and Sky walked into the bakery.

"What's this?" Bree asked in mock condescension. "You abandon us for the whole day and now you're trying to sneak pizza without us?"

"We were going to bring something back to the lodge," Sky said defensively. She reached for a piece of pizza, but Bree slapped her hand away.

"Over my dead body."

Hunter and Sky pulled up chairs around the table after both ordering some pasta thing from the Italian guy at the counter.

"So where did you guys go all day?" I asked curiously. "Was investigating afoot?"

"Actually, yes," Hunter said calmly. "We went back to that house in old Ballynigel. The destroyed one that I told you about?"

"I thought you said there was nothing mysterious about it."

Hunter bit his lip. "Yeah. I just wanted to check it out some more." With that, he hurried over to the counter to pick up his and Sky's pasta bowls.

"Okay ... what did you really do?" I asked Sky.

"We went to the house," she said truthfully. "Really."

"I'm going to interrupt to comment on the wonders of this pizza," Bree said. "Just wanted to let you know."

Sky looked resolute. "Okay, give me a piece of that." With that, she ripped a corner off of Raven's pizza. "Mm, this _is_ good."

Raven looked offended. "Hey! Get your own!"

"You guys have serious problems with sharing," Hunter said simply.

"So you didn't discover anything new at the house?" I asked, feeling semi-disappointed. We really were stuck.

Sky just shook her head. I looked down at my plate, suddenly not feeling very hungry.

"I'm going back to the lodge," I said quietly, standing up.

_Even though I'd be sacrificed  
You won't try for me, not now  
Though I'd die to know you love me  
I'm all alone  
Isn't someone missing me?_

The night passed in a strange haze of dreamless sleep, and I woke up the next morning feeling strangely neutral. Not refreshed, not tired, just ... neutral. Considering the pain that I was sometimes in when I woke up, though, I was willing to take whatever I could get.

I was brushing my hair in the bathroom and feeling depressed about our lack of success in the knowledge department when I heard a knock on my door, followed by five others in quick succession. I opened the door to reveal Bree and Raven standing in the hallway, both looking very worried.

"Morgan, have you seen Hunter and Sky?" Bree asked anxiously.

I shook my head. "No, I haven't even been downstairs yet." I paused. "Why? What's wrong?"

"They're gone," Raven said fearfully. "So is Alexis. We can't find them anywhere."

I furrowed my eyebrows and followed them downstairs to join the Sky-Hunter-Alexis search party. We met Robbie coming up the main staircase; he looked just as worried as Bree and Raven.

"They're not in any of the downstairs rooms. Alexis's is empty, but her stuff is still there."

"Sky's is in our room, too," Raven said.

I bit my lip. "Well, where would they go that they wouldn't tell us? Did you check the kitchen?"

"Right," Bree said sarcastically. "We forgot the most obvious place. ... Actually, we _did _skip it. Let's go now."

I glared at her and, upon walking into the kitchen, immediately spotted a piece of paper lying on the counter in plain sight.

"Um, did you read the note?"

"What note?"

My eyes widened as I scanned it. "This one."

I handed it to Bree. She looked at the signature curiously.

"It's from Sky." Robbie took it and read it aloud with Bree and Raven looking over his shoulder.

"Something is wrong with Alexis," he read. "Hunter and I are taking her back to Antrim. We don't know what it is, but we'll send Morgan a message when we hear something."

"I thought they said she was fine," I said, stunned. "They gave her a clean bill of health before she left the hospital in the first place. And she's been taking her enzyme supplements just like she was supposed to."

Raven cleared her throat. "Is it possible that this isn't something to do with her ataxia? I mean, what if someone did this to her? Like, put a spell on her?"

"Who would do that?" Robbie asked, surprised. "I mean, it's a pretty big violation of the Wiccan Rede if it really is a spell."

"The council wouldn't have a problem with that," I whispered. "Those hypocrites. Remember what they did to her mom? If they can get her away from us, they can steal her away when she's back at the hospital."

"I say we go to Antrim," Bree said. "They said they would message you, Morgan, but that could take hours. We should be there for Alexis."

"And how would we get there?" I asked. "They must have taken the council car."

"So what do we do?"

"... Nothing. There's nothing we can do."

_And if I bleed, I'll bleed  
Knowing you don't care  
And if I sleep just to dream of you  
And wake without you there  
Isn't something missing?  
Isn't someone missing me?_


	19. Wicker Man

**Disclaimer**: We don't own _Sweep_. Do we really have to say that in every chapter? I think after a while it gets redundant, but ... (shrug) Whatever. Don't own it. Don't sue. Don't have money to pay court charges. Anyway, stuff to know: the word "Abhainn" means 'river.' The spell isn't ours, either. If you want the web address, e-mail us and we'll send it to you. The quote at the beginning comes from William Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_. I don't think that he'll sue me, on account of he's dead, but ... eh. He's Shakespeare. He can do whatever he wants. The song is Nana Mouskouri's "Early One Morning." Its lyrics and music counter the chapter in a way that I think is effective ... if you could hear the song, I guess it would make more sense to you. Never mind. Ignore the ramblings of the mentally unstable author and review when you finish! :D

**Part XIX**: Wicker Man

_**Cowards die many times before their deaths;   
**__**The valiant never taste of death but once.   
**__**Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,   
**__**It seems to me most strange that men should fear,   
**__**Seeing that death, a necessary end,   
**__**Will come when it will come. **_

**Morgan**

Luckily, Bree, Robbie, and Raven saw through my pessimistic "there's nothing we can do" and suggested that I ask Brighde Lachlan, the store owner that Bree and Robbie had met for the first time the day before, if she had a car and, if she did, if we could borrow it. Brighde wasn't at the shop when we ran down the main street and into it, but the guy behind the counter took us to the apartment above the shop, where she was eating breakfast with two young kids who I assumed must be her grandchildren.

"Morgan," she said, looking confused. "What can I do for you?"

"Do you have a car?" I asked breathlessly. "Our friend is in the hospital, and we really need to get there somehow. We wouldn't ask normally, but you're the only one that we know in town ..."

A mix of emotions flitted across Brighde's face, some that looked to me like shades of worry, anxiety, and apprehension.

"Well ... yes. Yes, of course. My car is parked outside. Which hospital?"

"Antrim," Bree said. "The closest one to here."

She looked at us with an incredulous expression. "It's not the closest one. There's one fifteen minutes south of here."

This sunk in with an ironic jab. I sighed and sent Hunter a witch message, hoping against hope that he would actually respond to this one.

_Hunter, did you know that there's a hospital fifteen minutes south of Portrush_?

His reply was instant and sounded quite aggravated. _No, Morgan, I didn't. I obviously do now, though, because that's where we are. _

I quirked an eyebrow. _But Sky's note said that you guys were going to Antrim. _

_Alexis pointed out that there was a closer one. _

_Oh. We're coming down now. Brighde offered to take us. Or, rather, we asked if she would. _

_Morgan, she works for the council! We can't trust her anymore, remem – _

I cut him off and blocked his access to my mind.

"Let's go," I said. I had no reason not to trust Brighde. She had never been anything short of genuinely friendly to me. Hunter could just be overly paranoid sometimes.

_Early one morning just as the sun was rising   
__I heard a young maid sing in the valley below   
__Oh, don't deceive me   
__Oh, never leave me   
__How could you use a poor maiden so? _

Sky and Hunter just glared at Robbie, Bree, Raven, Brighde, and I when we met them in the waiting room at the hospital clinic in a cute bedroom community a few miles outside of Portrush.

"We told you not to come," Hunter said, sounding irritated.

"Did you really think we'd listen?" Bree asked rhetorically.

"How is she doing?" Raven asked softly.

Sky sighed and shook her head, sinking back in her chair. "I don't know. They won't tell us anything. I don't think they're even done examining her yet."

"What was wrong with her?" Robbie asked worriedly. "I mean, why did you guys leave the lodge in the first place?"

"She woke me up around three a.m. with a witch message," Sky said quietly. "She was ... in a lot of pain. I don't know, all I can guess is that her ataxia is somehow acting up again ..."

"But she was taking her medicine," I argued. "She was doing so well. This doesn't make sense."

"Are you all the ones that brought Alwyn Niall in?"

We turned to look at an aging doctor in confusion.

"Alwyn Niall?" Bree asked in confusion. "She's not –"

"Yes," Hunter said quickly, standing up to face the doctor. "Is she ... how is she doing?"

The doctor sighed and looked away for a moment. I felt my heart sink. This couldn't be good.

Sky bit her lip. "It's not ... good news, is it?"

"I'm afraid not," he whispered. "Her ..." He sighed deeply again. "I suppose there's no easy way to say this. Her muscles are deteriorating, Mr. Niall. The muscles in her legs are ... just dying. The cells are ceasing all life functions at an astonishing rate. We're attempting to slow the deterioration, but I honestly don't think there's very much we can do."

"Her muscles are deteriorating?" I whispered. "Is that ... I mean, is that supposed to happen?"

"Ms. Niall has a degenerative disorder," he said gently. "I'm afraid, in her case, there's not very much that can't happen in such a volatile situation."

"Is she ... is she in pain?" Sky asked, her voice tight.

The doctor nodded slightly. "I'm afraid so."

"Will she be okay?" Bree asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I'm ... we're not sure. But, from the looks of it, there's little chance that she'll ever be able to walk again."

No one spoke for a very long time after Dr. Callahan walked away. Sky looked at Hunter after a moment, barely disguised desperation in her eyes.

"Now what do we –"

"I don't know, Sky," he said sharply. "Believe it or not, Hunter doesn't always have a plan."

"There's nothing we can do to stop them from getting her now," Bree whispered. "We can't be here 24/7 to protect her."

"She won't even be out of the ER for quite a while, I'd estimate," Sky said. "And then Recovery ... if all goes ... better. She should be under constant surveillance by doctors, regardless." She looked semi-hopeful. "Maybe we have a while to form a concrete strategy."

"Hunter, I have to get back to Portrush," Brighde said softly. "Will you be all right?"

Hunter avoided eye contact with her, looking from Sky to me. "Yes, Brighde. Thank you. Thank you very much."

She left after a whispered "you're welcome."

I bit my lip. "Why Alwyn Niall?"

"Who else?" Hunter asked rhetorically. "We couldn't tell them that she was the missing patient from Antrim that's been making local headlines."

I nodded slowly, but then mentally slapped myself.

"We left Mike at the lodge."

"I'm sure that a teenager can spend an hour alone in a locked hotel, Morgan," Hunter said sarcastically.

I sighed. This was the sort of thing that made him feel like a burden to us. How could I have just forgotten to wake him, to bring him with us?

"I have to get back," I said quickly. "I have to make sure he's okay."

"Morgan, we have more important things to worry about than Mike right now."

"Killian wasn't there this morning when we left. I know this is serious, but he's there alone."

"Aren't you investing a little too much in him?" Hunter asked sharply, and his words vividly reminded of a less-than-pleasant conversation that we had recently had.

"He's my brother," I said simply. "Shouldn't I be?"

_Remember the vows that you made to me truly   
__Remember how tenderly you nestled close to me   
__Gay is the garland   
__Fresh are the roses   
__I've culled from the garden to bind over thee_

Imagine my anger to discover that Mike wasn't at the lodge when we returned about two hours later. The doctors had steadfastly refused to let us in to see Alexis, or "Alwyn", and promised to call the lodge when something was discovered. Sky and Hunter were both furious, but when Bree reminded them that Alexis was safe for the time being, Sky bitterly responded, "That doesn't mean a thing."

I was going to talk to Mike and apologize for running off without him, but all that I found in his room when I returned was a scrap of paper on the bed.

_**Hey, sis! **_

_**Mike and I decided to go back to Cork for a couple of days, and then we'll probably do Dublin. Imagine my shock when I realized that we've been in Ireland for several weeks now and we haven't done the American 'tourist' gig. He seemed upset when you lot weren't there, but I told him that it must have been something urgent. We'll be back in a few days. Two weeks, maximum. **_

_**Killian**_

_**P.S. Don't worry too much about him. I'm capable of being responsible when I want to. **_

Rude much? I mean, the two of them just _took off_? Great.

I knew that Mike brought something out in Killian that most people couldn't, a sense of responsibility ... Killian was very protective of him. But still ... who knew what kind of trouble they could get into in Cork? I didn't even know if Killian had finished that business that he said he needed to when he had first arrived in Portrush. Hopefully, though, they'd be back soon. Killian had left what I recognized as his favorite lighter on top of the note. Collateral, maybe.

I sighed.

"Morgan?" Bree was standing in the doorway. "Do you want something to eat before we start?"

I looked at her in confusion. "Start what?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Um, the circle?"

"What circle?"

She sighed. "You really were out of it in the car back, weren't you? We're going to do a healing spell for Alexis at the power sink in the basement. Sky and Hunter were talking about it the whole ride home?"

I shook my head. "No ... I mean, no, I don't want anything." I rubbed my head, which was starting to hurt. "No, I'm good for a spell."

Bree smiled. "Good. You looked really tired in the car, and it's only noon. Are you okay?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Where's Mike?"

"He and Killian took off."

"And just left a note? How rude."

I nodded in almost detached awareness. "I know."

_Here now I wander alone as I wonder   
__Why did you leave me to sigh and complain?   
__I ask of the roses   
__Why should I be forsaken?   
__Why must I here in sorrow remain? _

When I stepped down the stairs into the basement, followed by Bree, I saw that Hunter and Sky had already set up everything that we'd need for a circle. Incense, water, a candle, and a bowl of dirt stood in the four corners of a large circle, and a fat blue pillar candle dressed with cinnamon oil stood in the middle. "Abhainn" was carved into the candle, and I recognized it as Alexis's magickal name.

Hmm. I'd have to get myself one of those someday.

"Ready?" Bree asked.

"Almost," Hunter said. "Does anyone have a lighter?"

How ironic. "I do," I said, pulling Killian's out of my pocket. "Killian left this here. Sort of a promise that he'll be back, I suppose."

"Killian's gone?" Sky asked, unable to help the hopeful note that appeared in her voice.

"He took Mike with him," I said sullenly. "They went to Cork, and then they're going to Dublin."

"He could be gone for days," Sky said. "Weeks, even. That's just awful."

"Are we doing this or not?" I asked touchily. I knew that Sky had justified issues with Killian, but every so often, her self-righteous rants got on my nerves.

"Yes," Hunter said. "Everyone in a circle, now."

The six of us joined hands in a circle around the blue candle.

"_In the name of the Goddess and God who breathe life into us all_," Hunter began, "_We consecrate and charge this candle as a magickal tool for healing." _

"_In the name of the Goddess and God who breathe life into us all_," the rest of us repeated under our breaths, "_We consecrate and charge this candle as a magickal tool for healing."_

I could see Alexis in my mind's eye, her face white with pain while she tried not to cry out. Her muscles were burning in agony, like a thousand wooden splinters had pierced them. I gasped slightly, but then I began chanting the rest of the spell with the others.

_Magick mend while the candle burns   
__Sickness will end and health will return   
__Harm to none   
__So mote it be_

We circled the candle again and again, and its flame drew in and out of focus. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision, but everything was suddenly blurry.

_Magick mend while the candle burns_   
_Sickness will end and health will return   
__Harm to none   
__So mote it be_

I suddenly felt cold. It was a warm day outside, and the basement had been stiflingly hot when we had first come down here. I shivered, and I noticed how cold Bree's hand felt, too. Then I felt something familiar.

"Hunter!" I tried to cry out. "Hunter, Sky, there's something in here!"

But no sound came out.

_Magick mend while the candle burns   
__Sickness will end and health will return   
__Harm to none   
__So mote it –_

My vision went black as the floor rushed to meet my head, and I gasped in pain as I felt myself hit the basement wall. I opened my eyes, shaking, covered in a cold sweat, and saw that the circle space was empty. The candle had burned out, and the incense stick was not so much an incense stick anymore as a little pile of scented dust on the ground. The bowl of water had spilled onto the wooden floor, and the candle for the element of fire was no longer lit.

"What the hell was that?" I heard Bree's angry voice say from somewhere to my left.

I stood up quickly but grabbed the shelf nearest to me quickly. I was suddenly extremely dizzy. And something else felt ... strange. Odd.

I took a step forward, and I saw that, somehow, everyone else had been thrown out of the circle, too. Bree, rubbing her back with a grimace, was in the process of sitting up from where I assumed she had hit the staircase. Robbie stood up from next to a shelf full of canned beans, the blood already clotting on a small cut on his arm, and I saw Hunter, Raven, and Sky sitting up, too. Sky was examining Raven's elbow, which she had skinned on a corner of the concrete wall so deeply that it must have hurt like crazy.

"It's not bleeding, you'll be okay." She looked at the rest of us and then at Hunter. "What just happened? Did you –"

"Yes," Hunter said, his voice tight. I looked between him and Sky curiously. What were they talking about? "Yes, I felt it, too."

I raised my hand. "Um, do any of you feel weird, too?" I looked down at myself again. Something inside me didn't feel right. It felt ... empty. Suddenly still. Like all of my muscles had suddenly turned to jelly. "It feels like something in me is missing. Like, an organ."

"We broke the boundaries," Sky whispered, staring at Hunter with a new shock in her eyes. He looked grim and bit his lip slightly.

"Bugger ..."

"Can I speak for the rest of us when I say, 'Huh?'" Robbie asked.

"We broke the boundaries of the circle," Hunter said, looking at the burnt out pillar candle in dismay. "Something pushed us out."

"But why do I feel this way?" I asked desperately. "Why do we feel this way? Seriously, I think my stomach is gone or something. I feel really ..." I took a deep breath to calm what felt like a massive blood rush to my head.

"When you destroy the boundaries of a circle, it inhibits your natural powers," Sky whispered. "That's why, if you absolutely have to leave while doing magick, you're supposed to cut entry and exit doors."

"To make up for the disturbance to its ..." Hunter faltered.

"Electromagnetic field, metaphysical spectrum, etc.," Sky supplied.

"Yes, that," Hunter said firmly. "In order to make up for the disturbance to its metaphysical surface, the magick needs to take power from you. It, essentially, 'sucks you dry' so that it disperse itself and not be broken entirely."

"So it took our magick?" I whispered, a cold feeling spreading through me. "Will we get it back? Ever?"

Hunter laughed slightly. "Of course we will. Just ..." He sighed. "It can take upwards of a day, even two sometimes. It just depends on how much power was taken." He grimaced. "Since the circle was punctured at six points ... I'm going to say that it'll probably take quite a while."

"But why?" Robbie asked. "Why did we all get punched out of the circle?"

"There was something in it," Sky whispered.

I laughed in a kind of sarcastic, hysterical way. "Of course there was! I tried to tell you, but I couldn't ... I couldn't talk."

"What was it?" Hunter asked immediately. "Did you recognize it? Some kind of spirit?"

"It ..." I was suddenly finding it much harder to breathe. "It was a Diobhail. I recognized its essence, it ... it seemed familiar."

No one spoke.

"Well ..." Robbie said after a while, still looking shocked, "what do we do? Why did they do this to us?"

"We don't know anything about them, nothing useful," Sky said softly. "But ... I mean, they have to be planning something, right? Why else would they want us to lose our powers?"

I'll probably never forget the pounding fear that those two sentences instilled in me.

_Thus sang the maiden, her sorrows bewailing_   
_Thus sung the maid in the valley below   
Oh, don't deceive me   
Oh, never leave me   
How could you use a poor maiden so?_


	20. Seachrán as Bheith

**Disclaimer**: Holy crap … I can't believe it's been over a month since I've updated. I am **_soooooooo_** unbelievably sorry. I promise I won't let it happen again. Or, at least, I'll try not to let it happen again … next semester I have German II, Chemistry, AP World History, and Geography, so … we'll see, I suppose. Okay, copyright stuff. The _Sweep _series belongs to Cate Tiernan. The song used in this chapter belongs to Kelly Clarkson. … I think that's it. On another note, **please** review when you're done reading! I would hate to have to pull the story because no one is giving feedback (I mean, if no one is reading the story, it's somewhat pointless to keep updating, isn't it?). I love writing this, and I hope that you are enjoying reading it … but how would I know you're enjoying it unless you review? Oh, and the title means "Delusion from Existence."

sweetsoutherngal: What would I do without your many encouraging reviews? Thank you so much and please keep reading!

moon-faery69: Thanks for the compliment :P I love your stories, too (Go _The Big Pear_!). Keep reading! Oh, and there's a tribute to Sky's coffee high in the chapter :hehe: Sorry I couldn't explicate on it more ; )

By the way, I was reading a thread on a _Sweep_ discussion board about who would play all of the characters if the books were made into a TV show, which got me thinking …

**Morgan**: Alyson Hannigan  
_Willow kicks butt, man. She can be sweet, shy, evil, and in charge completely believably. _

**Hunter**: Drew Fuller  
_You know Chris from Charmed? For some reason, he strikes me as a Hunter. Although I guess the Jude Law from Alfie might work, too … ;)_

**Sky**: Mischa Barton  
_I'm not really a fan of The OC, but she's a) blonde, b) British, and c) capable of being just as stubborn as Sky. _

**Bree**: Charisma Carpenter  
_Looks like a supermodel? Beautiful but best friend material? Definitely Cordelia ;)_

**Robbie**: Nicholas Brendon  
_Can't you just see him as the dopey best friend? See? He's already got experience there. _

**Raven**: Amy Lee  
_I heard someone say that she's too old to play Raven, but she's only 23. She could play someone who's 18. _

**Alisa**: Michelle Trachtenberg  
_Kinda whiney, teenage-angsty … definitely Michelle Trachtenberg. _

So there you have it. Comment on my choices in those reviews that you will hopefully be sending my way. Oh, and I think that Seth Green would make an awesome Cal Blaire. Who doesn't love Oz?

In case you can't tell, I'm a huge _Buffy _fan. Go Scooby Gang! Okay … finally … on with the story.

**Title**: Seachrán as Bheith

**Morgan**

"This is a good macaroon," I said as I bit into one from the plate that Sky had been passing around.

"Thanks," she said with a smile. "It's Ma's recipe. She used to make them for us all the time."

"Yes, there's nothing better than Aunt Shelagh's baking skills," Hunter said with a grin, biting a cookie in half. "Coupled with Uncle Beck's … it was very hard to maintain a diet around our house."

"I know," Sky grinned. "Always out of shape, the lot of us."

"Are you kidding me?" Hunter asked in disbelief. "You're very nearly a twig. Four years on the drill team and you think you were out of shape?"

Uproar instantly exploded at the table where we were all sitting, looking at an old Niall/Eventide family scrapbook that Hunter had managed to dig up.

"You were on the _drill team_?" Bree cried, her eyes wide.

"You were a _dancer_?" I gasped. This was truly shocking.

Raven looked miffed. "Yes, Sky was a dancer! Why does everyone always insist on making a conversation out of it?"

Wow … suddenly I didn't know Sky Eventide anymore. I had never pictured her as a dancer prep-type.

"The operative word is 'was'," Sky said irritably. "I'm not anymore, obviously!"

"Wasn't the team motto 'Once a Highstepper, always a Highstepper'?" Hunter asked curiously. Sky just glared at him.

"Shut up."

"Wow," I said. I looked at Raven with wide eyes. "That totally goes against everything you stand for, Raven."

"I know," she said miserably.

"At least I _had_ extracurricular activities," Sky said, clearly searching for a way to redeem herself in her girlfriend's eyes. She looked at Hunter. "The only thing you ever stayed after school for was the science club."

Bree snorted. "Oh, I bet that mattered a lot."

"What now?" I asked absently.

"Well, come on," she laughed. "Hunter's so hot that I doubt it mattered that he was a science geek."

Hunter looked slightly offended. "Hey, geek in question sitting right here."

"I'll bet the phone never stop ringing at your house," Bree said, grinning as she examined what must have been a recent photo of the Eventide family plus Hunter and Alwyn.

I recognized Shelagh and Beck and Sky, and common sense told me that the other four girls must be Sky's sisters. Judging from the labeling on the back, Aimee, tall with the same light blonde hair as Sky, was the oldest. Next was Shannon, a year younger than Aimee with curled brown hair and big brown eyes. Sky stood next to her younger sisters Cara and Chelsea, both brunettes and both of whom took after Beck more while Sky and Aimee looked like carbon copies of Shelagh. Alwyn's bright red hair in the picture had clearly been straightened, and I was struck by how different she looked from Hunter. I couldn't help but wonder what the third Niall sibling, Linden, had looked like. I would ask Hunter or Sky, but it wasn't really something that they liked to talk about.

I snapped back to reality in time to hear Hunter and Sky still arguing.

"Of course the phone stopped ringing," Sky was saying.

"No, it didn't," Hunter scoffed. "Well, it did, but only when Aunt Shelagh unplugged it out of frustration around six every night because she couldn't stand its incessant ringing."

Raven just groaned with disgust. Hunter grinned.

"Well, come on, what would you expect? Sky and her sisters all made the varsity dance team as freshmen and stayed on it for four years. Alwyn was co-captain of the cheerleading squad."

"And you had the hotness," Bree grinned.

"I didn't know that there are British cheerleaders," Robbie said, surprised. "The English always seem so uptight." Hunter and Sky glared at him, and he just shrugged. "Do you deny it?"

"All I'm saying is that, if you wanted to be the most popular girl in school, you had to compete against Aimee, Shannon, Sky, Chelsea, and Cara Eventide and Alwyn Niall. It couldn't be done."

"We weren't –" Sky began to object.

"You guys had your own show at the pep rallies. Don't try to argue with me."

As Hunter and Sky went on to bicker about something else from their high school lives ("For the last time, I was _not _the one who spilled grape juice on your Highsteppers sweatshirt! Why would _I _steal your Highsteppers sweatshirt?"), I realized how strange it was that we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking about things that had no point whatsoever, considering what had happened earlier in the day. Considering how the blood witches among us had just lost their powers.

I shivered slightly. I wanted to curl up and take a nap, but something in me made me afraid to close my eyes. I couldn't help the strange sense of foreboding lurking at the corners of my mind.

_He drowns in his dreams  
__An exquisite extreme, I know  
__He's as dumb as he seems  
__And more heaven than a heart could hold  
__And if I tried to save him  
__My whole world could cave in  
__It just isn't right  
__It just isn't right_

"This is where you saw it?" Sky asked, looking around her. "You're sure?"

"No," I said sarcastically. "It was at the other Ballynigel cemetery."

"There's another one?" Bree asked.

I ignored her and resumed combing the area around the circle of graves for clues, remnants of magick, or anything that might give us a clue as to what was happening. Hunter had finally decided that the best plan of action would be, instead of arguing over who stole Sky's Highsteppers sweatshirt, to visit the cemetery—in pointedly broad daylight—and see if we could sense any of the Diobhail's presence and maybe discover what they were planning.

So far, our efforts had been useless.

Hunter was running his hand along the top of my grandmother's grave, which had been filled back in since my last visit. I guessed that whoever the groundskeeper was, if there even was one, had replaced the dirt.

"Mackenna Riordan …" Hunter whispered in awe, staring at the worn and weathered inscription. "She was an incredible witch, very powerful …" He looked at me with a small smile. "Like another Riordan descendent that I know."

I couldn't help but smile back slightly.

Sky was examining the headstone, too, but unlike Hunter, she was looking at the back of it. "If you two would keep focused, you might have noticed the inscription back here." As we knelt down beside her to look, I felt my stomach tighten in anger. Someone had carved runes into the stone. Someone had defaced the block of stone that marked the resting spot of a powerful Wiccan high priestess. More importantly, my grandmother. It took a lot of willpower to remove my nails from my palms, where they had dug into my skin when I clenched my fists.

"Runes for … the moon cycle," Hunter said, tracing over a rune that somewhat resembled a waxing gibbous moon. "And numerals … times, dates … it all fits. It points to today."

"No," Sky said quietly, pointing to another sigil. "Tonight."

I bit my lip as a sudden wave of fear washed through me. What was happening tonight? Something that involved us?

Was it when they were coming for us?

"What's tonight?" Robbie asked, unable to help the trace of fear that slipped into his voice.

No one answered him.

_Oh, and I don't know  
__I don't know what he's after  
__But he's so beautiful  
__Such a beautiful disaster  
__And if I could hold on  
__Through the tears and the laughter  
__Would it be beautiful  
__Or just a beautiful disaster? _

We spent the afternoon by ourselves that day. Not literally, but emotionally. No one spoke much even though none of us ventured anywhere without the other five present—well, except to the bathroom, but that was a given. No one wanted to be alone. Everyone was too afraid. Of what? We didn't even know.

We contemplated leaving Portrush, just running away from whatever could have been coming for us, but we didn't have anywhere to go. Our round-trip airline tickets to take us back to New York weren't for two weeks yet, and we didn't have enough collective money with us to buy six last-minute trans-Atlantic tickets.

Hunter, Sky, and I found ourselves up in the conference room back at the lodge for hours at a time, trying to call our powers back to us but stopping short of performing a power-calling circle. Our last circle had been a little too intense and consequence-filled for us to be eager to try one again. Hunter sat in an armchair, drawing complex rune charts on sheets of graph paper with an expression of utmost concentration on his face, and Sky was trying, judging by the look of disgust on her face without much luck, to summon witch fire. Raven and Bree were both sitting in corners of the room, gazing into space. Robbie stared ahead of him, and I sat against the wall next to Bree, Indian-style, softly reciting my power chant under my breath.

"_An di allaigh, an di aigh_ …" No luck. I didn't feel even the slightest stirring of magickal energy.

"Where are they?" I whispered under my breath, feeling immeasurably pathetic. I missed feeling … well, like a witch. Ever since I had become a witch, feeling magick inside had become part of my life. Now that I had to feel once again what life was like without it … it was lonely.

When Sky asked if anyone wanted anything for dinner, no one answered. I don't think that she expected any of us to … as if we could eat when we felt like this.

When the day had finally, after what felt like a millennia, disappeared into night, I forced myself to eat half a sandwich before going back out into the lobby, where Hunter and Sky were discussing what the plan for the evening would be. It was decided—despite, I suspect, internal uncertainties in all of us—that Hunter, Sky, and I, the three blood witches, would act as sentries throughout the night, making sure that nothing happened and that … well, that no one tried to attack us. Hunter questioned whether the three of us should take shifts alone or whether the others should stay with us as a precaution. Bree and Robbie immediately agreed to the latter plan, and seeing as Raven had been set against letting Sky stand guard alone in the first place, unanimity was reached.

I bit my lip slightly, internally wondering how we would split it up. I wasn't quite sure that I was ready to be alone with Hunter for a two-hour period. Not after what had happened before. I hadn't granted him _that_ amount of forgiveness yet. He must have sensed my trepidation; I thought I heard him sigh before he said that Bree should take a shift with me. Bree agreed, and we volunteered for the second shift of watch. Robbie and Hunter would take the first for two hours, then Bree and I for two hours, then Sky and Raven for two more hours. It would last us until four o'clock in the morning. As much as I hated to think that something might happen beforehand, it was unlikely that anything would happen after late night and early morning had passed by.

Robbie and Hunter stayed downstairs after the rest of us went to bed. The trouble with splitting up us three blood witches was that our witch message communication systems were down; how were we supposed to communicate telepathically when we couldn't even summon witch fire? It was a risk we had to take, though.

I didn't fall asleep right away. I'm not even sure if I ever did. Maybe I just lingered between consciousness and sleep, torn with worry and fear. After I had mechanically put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and gotten into bed, I just lay there, trying not to think. I could hear Sky and Raven talking quietly in the room next to mine, but their voices faded in and out. The next thing that I was aware of was Bree shaking me lightly.

"Morgan, come on. It's our turn."

"Did something happen?" I murmured groggily. "Robbie and Hunter, are they –"

"They're fine. Nothing happened." She gave me a very nervous smile. How was it that even at midnight she managed to look like a supermodel? "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

_His magic and myth  
__As strong as what I believe  
__A tragedy with  
__More damage than a soul should see  
__And do I try to change him?  
__So hard not to blame him  
__Hold on tight  
__Hold on tight_

The lodge was so quiet when Bree and I descended down the staircase to the lobby that I shivered involuntarily, a chilled feeling already settling in my stomach. Robbie and Hunter had left blankets and pillows out, but even with three warm cotton blankets wrapped around me, I still felt cold. I couldn't shake the feeling that something seemed off. Bree suggested turning on the television and seeing if anything good was on, but the only things on Irish televisions at midnight are infomercials from American filters, old black-and-white movies, and prayer channels that don't show anything but nuns reading from the Bible.

Not very much choice.

Eventually we settled for a black-and-white movie, but seeing as we had tuned in about halfway through, things didn't make sense to me. I think that one guy was having an affair with his best friend's wife while his best friend was trying to hide from the police for tax evasion.

But, then, I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open, so I had no idea what was transpiring on the screen in front of me. In fact, if it weren't for Bree, I would have fallen asleep the second that I plopped down on the couch. She nudged me every couple of minutes, saying, "Morgan, come on. You have to stay awake."

I think that she was trying not to fall asleep, too, though, because she went into the kitchen and came back with two huge mugs of coffee. She offered me one, but I declined; I don't really like the taste of coffee. I think she ended up drinking mine in addition to hers, because for the next half-hour she was bouncing up and down on the couch next to me, thereby making further sleep on my part impossible.

Her coffee high wore down around 1:45 as another black-and-white movie started playing. I didn't even bother trying to pay attention to this one; all of my energy was focused on staying awake and not collapsing back against the couch. I had no idea why I was so tired, but I felt like sleeping for 20 years like Rip Van Winkle couldn't have been such a bad thing right then.

"Morgan, do you get this Richard guy? His motives seem totally messed up to me, and I think …"

Bree was commenting on one of the guys in the movie, but I wasn't hearing her. My eyes were open, but I wasn't seeing. I finally let them drift closed. Bree would wake me if something happened. She was too high on coffee to not notice …

_Because I don't know  
__I don't know what he's after  
__But he's so beautiful  
__Such a beautiful disaster  
__And if I could hold on  
__Through the tears and the laughter  
__Would it be beautiful  
__Or just a beautiful disaster? _

**Sky**

It's difficult to sleep when one is, against one's will, horribly terrified that a clan of ethereal demons might attack during the night. Understandably. For most of the night, I had been hanging between falling asleep and just relaxing in bed, semi-aware of what was going on around me. I heard Robbie and Hunter troop back upstairs after their shift in the lobby was over, and vaguely made the connection in my mind that it was Bree and Morgan's turn. I didn't hear them go downstairs, though, so I'm not sure how alert I was to my surroundings.

I was conscious enough, however, to notice the sudden lack of warmth beside me that meant that Raven had gotten out of bed. Opening my eyes slightly to squint in the darkness, I asked, "Raven?"

She was sitting up in bed, listening intently and looking towards the door. I furrowed my eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

"Shh," she whispered, putting a finger to my lips. "Do you hear something?"

I sat up slowly, no longer squinting but craning my ears. "Something what?"

"Kind of like a low thud, but quieter."

I listened again for a moment. Now I could hear what she was referring to. Something heavy was clonking its way down the hallway outside our room, its heavy footsteps echoing in the silence.

"What is it?" I whispered, my voice shaking a little more than I would have liked it to.

"I don't know," she murmured. "I just heard it a second ago."

We sat there for a moment, not saying anything, just listening. It was like one of those moments in a horror movie when time seems to stand still as you listen to the footsteps echoing outside your hiding spot. I think we were both holding our breath even though our hearts were thumping increasingly fast with every millisecond. We both must have jumped at least a foot in the air with alarm when something rammed into our door with a resounding bang that echoed in my ears.

"Oh, my God!" I cried, clambering over the bed to the opposite wall, pulling Raven with me. She looked terrified.

"What's going on?"

I couldn't speak; my throat was constricted with fear. I could easily tell what was on the other side of that door.

"It's the Diobhail," I managed to whisper, my voice shaking uncontrollably.

The door hadn't budged from the huge beating it received; luckily, the doors were a good three inches thick and had heavy locks on them—thievery must have been common back in the 1800's. Even so, I could hear the demon outside raining blows on the door, and I could see the hinges, which had weakened slightly with age, beginning to quiver.

"Oh, Goddess," I whispered, now almost completely losing my head. "Goddess … what do we do? What do we do?"

"Distract him!" Raven insisted. "We have to get to the others somehow."

My hands were shaking so badly that I clenched my fists together to keep from going completely insane. "I can't, my magick hasn't come back yet!"

"What?" she cried. "Hunter said it wouldn't take this long!"

"I know, if it was back, I'd feel it." I groaned and let out a growl of frustration and panic. "And I know I could stun it or knock it out if I had –"

I had been on the verge of forming some kind of escape plan—one that involved hoping against hope that, in a moment of pure terror, my powers would sense that it was about time they came back—when I was suddenly being kissed with such a passion as to make linear thought impossible. The pounding outside the door, the fear inside, everything seemed to vanish instantly. When Raven pulled away a moment later, my brain had all but turned to mush.

"You feel it, don't you?" she murmured, her breathing heavy. "The energy?"

I nodded mutely, my mind still reeling. I _did _feel the energy, so much that I felt like I was standing on air. At Raven's nod, I cast a semi-nervous look towards the door and thought, _Here goes something. _

I wondered what the look on my face was when I pulled open the door and, without further ado, sent a stream of bright, shimmering magick at the invading force. In the darkness of the hallway, I could barely see what was lying on the ground in front of me. Raven looked into the hallway, peering cautiously over my shoulder.

"Did you get it?"

"Yes," I whispered, searching for the light switch on the wall. When I found it and it clicked on, we both gasped. Lying in front of us was a creature almost identical to Morgan's description of a Diobhail. Brown, cracked skin. Misshapen, jagged teeth. Its eyes had rolled back into its head, and its neck was twisted to the side. Wearing what looked like a rough-hewn brown robe and an almost medieval doublet, it truly looked like something out of a horror movie.

Raven was staring at it, a look of mixed horror and fear on her face. "What the hell is that?"

"Raven! Sky!"

Bree and Morgan were running down the hallway towards us. Morgan's eyes were wide, and Bree looked frightened.

"Are you guys okay?" Morgan demanded. "What's going on?" She looked at the unconscious demon on the floor and let out a cry. "Oh, God …"

"One tried to come in through the window in the lobby," Bree whispered, her voice shaking.

"Luckily, Bree momentarily stunned it," Morgan said, still staring at the Diobhail lying on the floor.

Raven wrinkled her nose. "How'd you do that?"

Bree held up a small bottle innocently. "Pepper spray. Useful for every mugging and the occasional life-threatening demonic attack." She looked at Morgan. "It just seemed to make him angry. He'll be figuring out that we took the side stairs up here while he was screaming and grabbing at his eyes."

My eyes widened. "_You didn't knock him out?_"

Morgan looked guilty. "Um, no powers, remember, which is why we should probably –" She paused and looked confused. "But, wait, how did you guys stop this one?"

I just smiled slightly and took Raven's hand. "We fought him off." I saw Raven smiling through the corner of my eye.

Suddenly, though, the sound of a crash and thundering roar echoed from the direction I recognized as the way to the east wing.

"Oh, no," Bree cried, paling. "He knows we're up here!" She gave her can of pepper spray a shake. "They don't make this stuff like they used to."

I groaned and grabbed the pepper spray from her. "Forget about your pepper spray! Let's get Hunter and Robbie and get out of here while we still can!"

"Here, here," Morgan said desperately. We were about to turn and head down the hall to the 300 rooms, where Hunter and Robbie were, when the two in question suddenly rounded the corner and very nearly crashed into us.

"We saw one!" six voices cried at once. A pause. "_You _saw one?"

As the thundering down a nearby hallway grew ever louder, we all realized what was going on at the same moment: the lodge was being stormed.

_He's soft to the touch  
__But frayed at the end  
__He breaks  
__He's never enough  
__Still he's more than I can take_

_Oh, and I don't know  
__I don't know what he's after  
__But he's so beautiful  
__Such a beautiful disaster  
__And if I could hold on  
__Through the tears and the laughter  
__Would it be beautiful  
__Or just a beautiful disaster?_


	21. Windswept

**Disclaimer**: Don't own: a) _Sweep_, b) the Jane Austen quote at the beginning from _Pride and Prejudice_, or c) Dido's song "Don't Leave Home", which is used in this chapter. Wow … what _do _I own? Now I'm depressed. ::insert sighing:: Oh, well. Read and review, or I'll beat you to death with a shovel. … we possess Willow power! Hehehe … oh, just read it.

moon-faery69: I agree that Poppy Montgomery would make a good Sky, but would you really cast _Harmony _in the role, too? Sky always struck me as the brainy type, which Harmony … well, definitely isn't. But aaaanyway … please don't follow up on the fork threat! I'll never be able to look at a fork the same way again. ;)

borntotry: Thanks for the compliment :D I put a lot of effort into that chapter, so I'm glad to see that you liked it. Have you read the rest of the story or just up to there?

tic tac: Nope, it's not rude to point out the lack of make-out sessions between Morgan and Hunter. I guess that I just don't think that those sorts of things are necessary to make a story really good. Yes, they can help, but … (shrug) whatever. There are other stories to read if you want stuff like that. Plus, in later chapters, Morgan and Hunter aren't on the best of terms with each other, so to have make-out sessions every five minutes doesn't seem especially logical. Oh, and almost forgot. I think the reason that I focus on other relationships besides Morgan and Hunter is because, for one, Cate Tiernan didn't focus on other characters as much. I get that those two are the main characters, but … still, someone has to pick up the slack, y'know? Since no one else in this website seems to focus on anyone _but _Hunter and Morgan, I figured that the other couples of the series could use a little spotlight time, too.

**Title**: Windswept

_Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. _

_**Till this moment, I never knew myself**._

- Jane Austen

**Morgan**

My heart pounded painfully in my chest. The temporary relief I had felt seeing Hunter and Robbie all right died away almost instantly at the sight of the Diobhail that had attacked Bree and I thundering down the far end of the hallway towards us.

"Look out!" I screamed as a black bolt of magick shot from the demon's outstretched hand. Were it not for Sky and Hunter pulling them instantly out of the way, Raven and Bree, who had been standing right in its line of fire, would have …

Goddess.

"Run!" Hunter yelled, drawing a rune of blocking in midair in front of us and pushing us down the hallway. "Go! Now!"

I could barely feel my feet pounding down the hallway as the six of us ran for the side stairs that would lead us back to the main level. There was only fear. I knew what pure terror felt like in that moment. As we emerged into the main lobby, I took in again the destruction that had been caused. The glass of the front windows was shattered into infinite pieces in front of the door, and I was grateful that I had my slippers on, unlike the others, when we ran to the front door.

Hunter grabbed the handle and tried to pull it open, but it didn't budge. He twisted the lock, his hands shaking, but in vain.

"Unlock it!" Robbie cried, looking over his shoulder to fearfully watch the hallway we had just run out of.

_Like a ghost don't need a key  
Your best friend I've come to be  
Please don't think of getting up for me  
You don't even need to speak_

Hunter was still struggling with it. "It's locked from the outside, and there are too many spells to break through." I had felt the magick on the door the moment we had approached it. Layers upon layers of locking and binding spells had been placed on it. Even more, I thought, than had been on Selene Belltower's library. I felt panic clutch my heart; this was the only way we knew to get out of the lodge. The kitchen door was locked, as well, and we never _had _managed to find the key.

"Where do we go?" Sky demanded. "The kitchen door is locked!"

"Isn't there a way out through the basement?" Hunter asked. "I saw stairs that led up to the backyard."

Instantly, we made a break for the basement. The kitchen was eerily silent until we drew near the door to the basement. A low humming filled my ears, something indiscernible … it sounded like chanting. Hunter pulled open the door to the basement and almost instantly slammed it shut again.

We had all gasped simultaneously. Three more Diobhail had been standing in a circle over the power sink, ironically in the same spot that we had chosen for our healing spell, chanting in a strange tongue that sounded ancient and mysterious. Each held a burning taper in their gnarled hands, focusing with immense concentration on whatever it was they were doing, before Hunter had thrown open the door and distracted them.

Through the closed door, I could hear a roared order. "Get them!"

Hunter quickly drew a locking rune on the doorknob, but I wouldn't have even bothered. "That won't hold them for very long, I'd wager."

"Now where?" Bree cried, tears of fear forming in her eyes.

Robbie snapped his fingers. "The cellar! It has a steel door!"

The good thing about a large hotel like the Candle Lodge was that the storeroom was gigantic. We had been in there only once before, searching for flour to make pancakes one morning. We had had an incredibly difficult time opening the door, which was made of solid steel about four inches thick. Hunter had, luckily, oiled the door so that it was easier to open. We raced for it, hearing the Diobhail pounding up the stairs to the main level from the basement. The combined efforts of Hunter and Robbie pulled the heavy door open with a loud creak, and when we all had raced inside, slammed the door shut with a deafening bang.

No one spoke for a moment.

"Goddess …" I whispered, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "Goddess … what do we do, _what do we do_?"

"I don't know," Hunter muttered, looking just as frightened as I felt.

"There has to be some way out that we haven't found yet," Bree reasoned, her voice shaking.

"Over here!" Raven and Sky were standing in front of a small window that couldn't have been more than two by one feet. "Come on!" Sky picked a large can of stewed tomatoes up from the nearby vegetable products shelf and hurled it at the window. The glass shattered instantly, and with a unanimous sigh of relief, the rest of us ran over. Raven cleared away the glass before standing on top of an empty crate to climb out of the window. She helped Sky up next, and, slowly, painstakingly, one by one, we were out.

_When I've been here for just one day  
You'll already miss me if I go away  
So close the blinds and shut the door  
You won't need other friends anymore_

"Did they see us?" I breathed, shivering in the cold night air. It was so dark that I could barely see the others in front of me.

"I don't see any of them," Hunter said. The sound of the demons banging down the cellar door was audible suddenly, and Sky looked at the rest of us.

"The car is at the front," she said quickly. "Do you have the keys?"

"Got them," Hunter said, holding a key chain up, from which dangled what I recognized as the keys to the council car. "I grabbed them right before we ran out of the kitchen."

The car was parked at the front of the lodge in a side driveway, and, luckily, we couldn't see any more Diobhail stationed at the front. Sky, Raven, Robbie, and Bree crowded into the back as Hunter and I took the driver's and passenger's seat. Hunter jammed the keys into the ignition and, with a speed that almost frightened me, pressed on the gas pedal and powered the car out of the driveway.

"Are any following us?" Hunter asked, trying to look out the side mirror as we sped down the main street of Portrush.

Sky twisted around in her seat and looked out the back window. "I don't think so."

"Any watch sigils on the car?"

"No."

"Morgan, are you –"

"I'm on it," I said. I had already begun tracing concealing and hiding runes out the window as we reached the town limits and emerged into the rolling countryside to the south of the town. The car lights were the only source of light; the moon was covered with clouds.

"What the hell was …" Raven began, before collapsing against Sky, exhausted. Sky kissed the top of her head comfortingly, but I saw how scared she looked, too.

"They were so …" Bree whispered, but stopped. I didn't blame her; I couldn't exactly think of an adjective that would quite describe them, either.

"Unearthly?" Robbie suggested, his face still pale white.

"They're supposed to be a clan of ethereal spirits," Sky whispered. "How did this happen? They're not supposed to have manifested into a physical form."

"They looked pretty solid to me," Bree grumbled.

"Was there _anything _in your book that would have explained why they're here?" Hunter asked Sky. I narrowed my eyebrows.

"What book?"

"The book that she found the Diobhail in."

I glanced at Sky in confusion, catching her wide-eyed look too late. "But we got the information from the Akashic Records, not a book."

Hunter slammed his feet on the brakes so hard that all of us flew forward in our seats as the tires skidded to a dead halt on the road.

"You checked the _what_?" he demanded, twisting around to glare between Sky and I.

Bree slapped him upside the head. "Hunter, you dork, keep driving! They could still be following us!" Hunter muttered something under his breath before stepping on the gas again. When we had gone about a mile and were going so fast that I would have been very frightened if I hadn't known that Hunter was a meticulous and cautious driver, he turned to glare at Sky again.

"You told me that you found out about them from a book! What's this about the Akashic Records?"

"We checked them instead?" Sky said meekly.

"But only really advanced witches can do that," Hunter said, uncomprehending.

"Right," Sky said. "So the logical conclusion is –"

"All right, all right," Hunter groaned quickly. "Moving past petty jealousy, what made you check the Akashic Records?" He paused suddenly. "They're supposed to be really hard to access …"

Sky and I both grimaced at the memory of the disgusting herb tea that we had been forced to ingest to reach the astral planes. "Oh, they are," she said. "But we won't get into that now. Morgan wanted us to."

"What?" Hunter demanded. He looked at me. "Why did you ask her to check the Akashic Records?"

I sighed. "After I saw one digging up my grandmother's grave, I wanted to know what was going on. Understandably."

"Not that Sky is incapable or anything …" he began, "but … why didn't you come to me?"

"Because we're not on the best of terms right now, Hunter dearest," I said coldly. He just looked away with a sigh of frustration. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything else.

"The point is," Sky continued, "that we don't know very much about these things or why they're after us, which, in my mind, is cause for …" Her eyes widened with a sudden realization. "Oh! Alarm! Alexis is still at the hospital!"

"We can't go back now!" Hunter cried.

"You just want to leave her there with these monsters crawling around?" she questioned. She paused. "I did _not _just say monsters."

"Don't worry yourself for no reason," Hunter said. "They're not after her. They're after us. Chances are, they won't touch anyone in Portrush." He sighed, his eyes still on the road. "And if they do, I'll be taking an extreme guilt trip, so there won't be any need to rub it in."

Sky still looked distressed, and he sighed, his voice softening. "She'll be okay, Sky."

Sky just nodded after a long moment.

_Don't leave home  
__Don't leave home_

After a while, Robbie spoke up. "So … where are we going?"

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Wherever we can find a safe place to stop, I suppose," Hunter said quietly.

"Where _is _safe?" Raven asked timidly.

"… Wherever the Diobhail aren't." 

We drove for over an hour in silence. I glanced at my watch. It was three-thirty in the morning.

I looked at the backseat at the others, and suddenly my heart ached. Raven and Bree were the most shaken up of the four, still reliving the moment that they had barely avoided the invading demon's magickal attack. Bree was shivering in Robbie's embrace, her face pale and fear still visible in her dark eyes. He looked exhausted, but he still held her tightly. Raven clung to Sky, still trembling visibly. I could feel Sky's tiredness and fear, too, but there was an unwavering tenderness in her eyes as she stroked her lover's hair gently.

I looked at Hunter, just a sideways glance. He was watching me, too, alternating between looking at me and the road. I took a deep breath and continued to trace concealing runes in our path.

I shivered slightly. The empty road seemed to stretch forever.

_If you're cold  
__I'll keep you warm  
If you're low  
__Just hold on  
Because I will be your safety  
Don't leave home _

"How long has it been since we've seen a house?" Bree asked, looking out the window, her eyes glazed over with tiredness.

"About two hours, give or take," Sky sighed. "Hunter, do you have any idea at all where we are?"

Hunter just rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was the only one, being the one at the wheel, out of us that hadn't slept or at least rested since we had left the lodge. "Honestly? No."

I sighed. "Wonderful."

It was now past eight o'clock in the morning. We had been driving for five hours and, according to Hunter, gone about 350 miles. I suppose that's the good thing about empty roads in the middle of the Irish countryside; we hadn't seen a single car since we had left.

"We're going to have to stop soon," Hunter said, glancing at the gas meter. "We're almost out of petrol, and I don't think driving in broad daylight will be such a good idea."

We drove on for about an hour, peering out the windows, looking for some sign of human civilization. We had been in a thick forest for about ten minutes when Hunter sighed again.

"Is anyone else feeling a tad hopeless?"

"Actually, no," Sky said, sounding surprised. "There's a house up there a bit. I can see the driveway from here."

Hunter and I both followed her gaze, and surely enough, a clearing in the trees was visible to the side of the road. A worn and tattered mailbox stood at the end of a small road that curved into the trees and out of sight.

"Someone must live out here, then, right?" Robbie asked. "We could stop and ask if we could borrow some gas."

"Plus some clothing, as well," Sky said.

I realized with a jolt that she was right. All of us were in our pajamas. Not only that, but we had left _everything _at the lodge. Our food, our luggage, our clothes, for the girls our toiletries … I hadn't brushed my hair in hours. I was sure it was a mess. Great. Great. The situation was improving with every second. It took quite a bit of willpower to keep from yelling some very strong invective out of frustration. I was so tired, even though I had closed my eyes for a little bit, and I was afraid, and I just wanted this trip to be over.

_And I arrived when you were weak  
I'll make you weaker  
__Like a child  
Now all your love you give to me_

Hunter turned down the gravel road that the mailbox had signaled, and for ten minutes, we wound our way through dense forest on a road that was so bumpy that everyone was being jostled up, down, left, and right. For what a trek it was to the house that the mailbox belonged to, I'm sure all of us were pretty disappointed.

The house was massively impressive on its own, I supposed, but there was just something about the way that it was totally and completely dilapidated that … I don't know, just kind of ruined the image for me. I'm sure that at one time it was a gorgeous estate, probably owned by some wealthy Irish businessman or other. It was at least three stories tall and it must have been beautiful once; now, though, the columns at the front were covered in dust and dirt, a dirty reminder of what must have once been sparkling white marble structures. The bricks were dirtied and some had fallen out of their frames on the upper levels and dropped to the sandy driveway at the front. The roof was missing huge clumps of shingles, and all of the windows visible on all three floors were either broken or so grimy that I doubted one could ever see through them again.

"Welcome to paradise, ladies and gentlemen," I whispered under my breath.

"Judging by the complete lack of any other human presence, I'm going to guess that no one lives here," Bree said, stating the obvious.

Hunter sighed, still looking at the mansion with a grim expression on his face. "We don't have much choice. We've only got enough petrol left to go about a mile or two. So … it's this, or a forest road in the middle of nowhere." He looked slightly hopeful. "There might be supplies inside, and then we could keep going."

"Right," Robbie said sarcastically. "Keep going. That's smart. We haven't seen a house in two hours and you want to keep going? I'm thinking that can't be a good decision."

"I have to agree with him," Sky said reluctantly, looking at Hunter worriedly. "The chances of us finding another house in this part of the country … I mean, it's clear that it's not exactly heavily populated."

Hunter sighed deeply before shrugging and turning the key in the ignition again. "Fine. But I'm checking to see if it has a garage or something. I don't want to leave the car out in plain sight … for reasons that should be obvious."

I nodded. "I think that's best."

Bree looked between all of us before smiling slightly. "Okay … so, that's it? We're staying here?" At everyone's eventual nod, she launched into the infamous Bree Warren plan-mode. "Okay. So, Morgan, why don't you, Hunter, and Sky scour the surface of this place with spells and stuff to make it hard to find while the rest of us look for some food and gasoline and stuff?"

Raven groaned. "God, food … I'm starving."

"Yeah, well, pure terror will do that to you," I said with a shrug as the six of us got out of the car. "So let's get to it. Time's not moving any slower."

_If you're cold  
__I'll keep you warm  
If you're low  
__Just hold on  
Because I will be your safety  
Don't leave home _

"So, what have we got here?" Bree asked as she rummaged through a box of canned goods. "I'd take inventory, but I haven't got a pad of paper." She paused. "Ooh, crab-filled ravioli! Can we make that for dinner tonight?"

I grinned. "Sure, Bree."

Hunter, Sky, and I had finished concealing the mansion and the car, which we had hidden underneath some fallen tree limbs from the last summer storm to hit the area. I had then brought forth the idea that Sky should call Shelagh and Beck and, in not so many words, beg them to come rescue us. Unfortunately, none of us had Beck's new phone number since he had moved out of Shelagh's place to teach at Oxford University. Sky had gone in search of a telephone in the house to try to call her mother, but I could tell that Hunter almost felt it wasn't worth it. At the moment, all of us minus Sky were going through innumerable cans of food in the pantry after we had cleaned up an inch-thick layer of dust covering everything in the kitchen and cupboards.

I was the first one to see Sky enter the kitchen. She didn't look too happy.

"Well," she said, "the good news is that I _did _manage to finally hook up one of the phones to a main connection." She bit her lip.

"And the bad news?" Hunter asked.

"Aunt Shelagh took all of Briongloid Radharc to Pemberley."

Hunter looked shocked. "_What_?"

Sky looked very agitated. "Yes, as a way to 'relax and heal' after what Cràdh Fisher did to all of them. According to her answering machine, they won't be back for three weeks."

"What's Pemberley?" I asked curiously.

"Our summer home in southern England," Sky said.

"Mansion, more like," Hunter clarified. "It's bigger than this place. We used to go every summer. Since none of us are living at home anymore, I suppose Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck are using it more."

"And you can't send her a witch message?" I asked, a sinking feeling beginning to settle in my stomach.

"No, it's too far away," Hunter sighed. He looked at Sky. "Do you know the phone number to Pemberley?"

"No," she admitted. "And I remember that Ma always kept it unlisted."

"Pemberley …" Raven had a thoughtful expression on her face. "Is that named after –"

"Jane Austen?" Sky asked dryly. "Yes. Ma thought the place needed a new name, my sister Aimee had just finished reading _Pride and Prejudice_ …"

"Hunter could play Mr. Darcy in a movie adaptation," Bree grinned.

I shrugged. "I don't know, I thought the guy who did it in that _A&E _presentation was pretty good."

"Morgan, when did you _watch_ that?" Robbie asked, his eyes wide. "Isn't it, like, six hours long?"

"It was rainy, I was bored, and Mary K wanted to watch it," I said defensively.

It felt good to be talking about semi-normal things with my friends. Things that didn't involve ethereal demons and the fact that we were stranded in the middle of a mansion on the Irish coast with no possible means of escape. I sighed. This situation would take some serious thought.

"I just want out of here," Bree said quietly. "I'd sit through that whole movie ten times if we could just …"

"I know," I sighed. "I know."

_If you're cold  
__I'll keep you warm  
If you're low  
__Just hold on  
Because I will be your safety  
Don't leave home_


	22. Epiphany

**Disclaimer**: Okay, Part 22 here! Yay! The song belongs to Utada Hikaru … and yes, it is Japanese pop, but it's one of Wiccan #2's favorite songs … anywho, this story is ending up pretty long … I can't say exactly how much is left, but when this is done, then comes the epilogue. I've already got the story planned through to the end, and I might post the epilogue as a separate story. It's longer than one chapter, that's for sure. Considering what'll happen by then … but I shouldn't give away any more! Review at the end and tell me how much you hate me and how much you hope it's just an illusion. You'll see what I mean ; )

moon-faery69: Hehe, thanks :D Yup, I wrote more. I like writing … (hides in embarrassment) I guess I'm just a dork that way. But … then … all of us have accounts! Does that make us dorks? (wonders) Nope, because writing is awesome and so is _Sweep_ … therefore, the dorkiness of us is minimal … wow, what have I been saying? I'd better shut up now.

Raynornlimegreen: Wow … I mean, my God, wow! Lol, that was certainly interesting to open up my email and see about fifty little buttons that say "Review Alert!" Wow again … hehe, words can't really describe the way I feel right now :D I'm so happy! Lol, here's the next chapter!!!

**Part XXII**: Epiphany

_When you walk away  
__You don't hear me say  
__Please  
__Oh, baby  
__Don't go  
__Simple and clean is the way  
__That you're making me feel tonight  
__It's hard to let it go_

**Morgan**

On some strange subconscious level, I felt a little bit of surprise. This was actually one of the better nights of sleep that I had gotten in several weeks. I was stranded in a mansion in the middle of nowhere in a strange continent and country and had no idea where I was, and yet for some reason I was sleeping like a baby. It must have been the exact second that I collapsed onto the bed that I fell asleep; I didn't even remember feeling my head hit the pillow. All I knew was that I felt safer and warmer than I had for a long time. It was almost as if …

Hunter. Goddess, just the thought of him, even a fleeting one, was enough to stir a tiny twinge of pain. He had taken the room down the hall from mine. He hadn't even bothered to ask if I wanted to share one. But I could understood that. I probably would have said no anyway … I wasn't ready to deal with that just yet.

I always felt safe and warm whenever Hunter was with me. Since our fight, I hadn't … this was nice, though. The bed sheets had been a little dusty. The windows in my room were grimy and covered with curtains, which were bathed in gross layers of dirt and filth. I had managed to make the place look semi-clean, though. Plus, the bed was actually comfortable. Someone really rich must have lived here once. The sheets were made of white silk.

For all of the dust around the place, it may not have been a five-star Hilton resort, but it'd do for the time being.

I was walking somewhere familiar … where was it? Looking around, I saw green grass and rolling hills. The sun felt so warm on my bare shoulders, and the grass tickled between my toes. I smiled to myself. It was such a beautiful day.

Looking off into the distance, though, my eyes narrowed. What was that up there? I strained my eyes and began to walk faster, squinting into the distance. I felt the wind whishing past me, and suddenly I was standing in the middle of a circle of graves. My eyes widened; it was the Ballynigel cemetery. The wind was beginning to whip past me faster, stinging my eyes. I looked down at my grandmother's grave and shivered suddenly and violently.

I saw myself tied to it. There was a cut above my left eyebrow, and blood dripped down the side of my face. I looked battered and bruised, and I was unconscious. My eyes narrowed as I stared at myself. One moment, though, I was there and the next I was gone. I looked at the grave in confusion. My mirror image was no longer tied to the grave. I looked around, searching. Where had the vision gone? My eyes glanced at the sky, and I took a step backwards in fear. It had been sunny and clear blue a moment ago; now it was dark and stormy. It looked like the dead of night instead of mid-afternoon.

I felt goose bumps and rubbed my arms violently. I was so cold that I was shaking violently.

_**You see this world? **_

I looked around me in panic. The trees were swaying so fiercely that I was afraid they would topple over within minutes.

_**This is the world that cannot be allowed to exist. **_

I saw my friends. They were crying. Hunter was striding down an empty street surrounded by skyscrapers and huge buildings. It was raining and pitch black. He was soaked, but his pace didn't slow at all. The determination in his eyes scared me.

**_It is the world that magick's most evil influence will create. _**

I shivered. Where was that voice coming from? It sounded so close.

My arms were pulled tight to my sides. I struggled in vain and cried out in pain as what felt like sharp knives pierced my skin. I couldn't move my arms or my legs; I was under a binding spell. I struggled as I felt the heat increase. I was burning up.

**_It is the world that _you_ will create. _**

My eyes snapped open immediately. Someone really was talking to me. The first things I saw when I opened my eyes were the bloodshot eyes and cracked brown skin that had haunted my mind for the past twenty-four hours.

"Good morning, Ms. Riordan," a deep voice growled from the depths of the Diobhail's throat. "It has been a while."

_You're giving me  
__Too many things  
__Lately you're all I need  
__You smiled at me  
__And said  
__Don't get me wrong, I love you  
__But does that mean  
__I have to meet your father?  
__When we are older, you'll understand  
__What I meant when I said no  
__I don't think life is quite that simple_

My heart clenched painfully as icy cold terror began to spread through me. I took a deep, shaky breath as I tried to move but couldn't. Beads of sweat trickled down my face, and I struggled against the spell; I felt like I was on fire … and not in a good way. I gave a cry and looked wildly around me. I wanted to yell out to someone, but I couldn't open my mouth.

"Don't bother trying to talk," the Diobhail said with a sadistic, gruesome smile. "It is your turn to listen, Ms. Riordan."

I opened my mouth and cried out silently. _Hunter! _Oh, Goddess, what was going to happen to me?

_When you walk away  
__You don't hear me say  
__Please  
__Oh, baby  
__Don't go  
__Simple and clean is the way  
__That you're making me feel tonight  
__It's hard to let it go_

**Hunter**

A sharp, searing pain in my head instantly awoke me from sleep, and I bolted upright, gasping and clutching my head, which was pounding agonizingly. I looked around me, unable to see anything in the darkness of my room. I was trying to listen, straining my ears for any sounds. Suddenly feeling very much like Ms. Clavell, I realized that something was very wrong. The air rippled around me. Something nearby was emanating an enormous amount of power. It was almost stifling.

_Hunter_!

Oh, no … Morgan …

I instantly made a break for the door, throwing it open and running out into the hall. I stopped abruptly right outside Morgan's door, breathing even more heavily. Something was in there, I could feel it … but, Goddess, the power … I had never felt so much power coming from one place before. Not from a power sink or a bith dearc or anything.

"You need to learn your place."

I tried to reach for the door, but I couldn't touch it. With every second, it seemed to get farther away from my outstretched hand. I could barely think; the heat was suffocating.

"This universe has not spent billions of eras perfecting good and evil to have one little witch destroy the equilibrium."

What was that voice? What was it saying?

I knew what I had to do, but …

"I will not allow a frail human to destroy my clan."

I threw open the door.

"_Ceangail_!" The words had issued from me before I had even thought about, even registered what I saw before me. The mere split-second image that rushed through my brain of Morgan locked in a binding spell on her bed with a Diobhail standing in front of her faded into an image of Morgan gasping, her breathing raspy, on the bed and an unconscious demon on the floor in front of us.

I distantly heard Sky come running to us from the other end of the hallway.

"What happened?" she demanded.

I looked at Morgan, still breathing heavily, unable to understand. My mind wasn't functioning correctly. It was all a haze.

She looked about to cry. I saw the sheer confusion in her eyes, the fear, and I understood.

_The daily things  
__That keep us all busy  
__Are confusing me  
__That's when you came to me  
__And said  
__Wish I could prove I love you  
__But does that mean  
__I have to walk on water?  
__When we are older you'll understand  
__It's enough when I say so  
__And maybe some things are that simple_

Ropes and chains bound the Diobhail to a thick stone column in the manor's dining room. It seemed strangely out of place next to the dusty antique tables and chairs and bookcases full of volumes of Irish history. Morgan, Sky, Robbie, Raven, Bree, and I stood around the column in about a fifteen-foot circle, staring at the sight before us in stunned horror.

"H-How did it get in?" Bree finally asked, still staring at the demon. "No one heard it. Last time, they made a racket."

"I don't know," Morgan whispered. "I was just dreaming, and then he was there. Talking to me. He was in my dream, and I woke up and he was right there in front of me."

"How did you manage to knock him out, Hunter?" Sky asked me quietly. "Something this big and clearly powerful …"

"It was his own power," I admitted. "I could feel it from way in my room … he was washing the whole manor in it. The strange thing was that it … it didn't feel evil. It was … just neutral. Just magick. It was infusing." As much as I hated to admit it … "I probably couldn't have knocked him out if I hadn't had that extra power."

"Is anyone else just a little worried about those chains and ropes holding him?" Robbie asked, looking anxious. "I mean, this guy is huge. And by huge I mean muscular. There's no way that –"

"We spent half an hour putting spells on those chains," Sky said grimly. "All I can say is that they had better contain his powers." She looked to me. "I wish we had our supplies with us. I could do a spell to bind his magick, but …"

"We need to find out what these guys want from us," Morgan whispered. "We can't keep running from them."

"Hmm … what they want from us …" Robbie pretended to think. "Well, since they've chased us across half the freaking country, I'm thinking it's nothing good."

"If it's any consolation, if they wanted us dead, they probably would have done it a long time ago," I said unhelpfully.

"Please don't say dead," Raven groaned. "This is bad enough as it is without thinking about the worst-case scenario."

"So … what do we do with him?" I asked, raising my eyebrows and motioning towards the demon's unconscious form. "I mean … we don't know who he is or …"

"Well, I'm thinking that doing anything more than knocking him out isn't a good idea," Bree said matter-of-factly. "I mean, for all we know, he's their leader. They'd get pretty mad if we offed their boss."

Something about her sentence struck me.

"Leader …" I whispered, the thoughts forming rapidly in my head. "Leader … oh, Goddess, this must be the leader! It has to be! We didn't feel that kind of power coming from the others in the lodge that night."

"You're right …" Sky looked thunderstruck.

"The patches …" Morgan whispered, staring at the Diobhail.

"What patches?"

"The patches all over his clothes, look …" Covering the demon's robes and cape were patches of rough brown hewn cloth. I gasped when I examined them closely.

"Ur for resurrection," I whispered. "Os for strength and power … Rit for world events and the continuum of the world … Ka for power … Ar and Sig for leadership." I swallowed heavily. "I think you're onto something. All of these runes … they point to power. That one there? A divine destiny. This guy isn't just any Diobhail, he's their leader."

"Oh, God …" Robbie whispered, looking pained.

"… What do we do?" Bree asked tentatively after a terse moment of silence.

"Go back to bed," I whispered.

"Excuse me?" Robbie practically yelled.

"You expect us to be able to sleep when there's a demon chained up in the dining room?" Raven asked tensely.

"I'm serious," I said. "There's nothing more that can be done. We have to hope that these chains are strong enough to hold him with our spells on them." I bit my lip. "Our magick has almost, if not fully, returned, so they should hold him somewhat well." I looked from my cousin to my … what were we now? Exes? "Morgan, Sky, and I will take turns standing watch."

The uproar was almost instant.

"Excuse me?" Bree demanded. "There's no way we're letting the three of you –"

"What do you suggest we do, then?" I snarled. "In case you haven't noticed, we're trapped in a manor in the middle of nowhere with no supplies and a horde of ethereal spirits after us! Now I may not always have a plan, and when I do have one they might not always work, but right now, if you have another suggestion, feel free to enlighten me!"

There was silence from Bree.

"I thought so," I said quietly. "Now I'll stand the first watch. The rest of you lot can –"

"No," Morgan whispered. "I'll do the first one. I want to be here when he comes around."

"Morgan –" I began softly.

"Don't," she whispered, glaring at me. "Let me do this."

What could I do but nod? As the rest of us left the living room and Morgan shut the door behind us, I couldn't help the uneasy feeling that was growing in the pit of my stomach at that very moment.

_When you walk away  
__You don't hear me say  
__Please  
__Oh, baby  
__Don't go  
__Simple and clean is the way  
__That you're making me feel tonight  
__It's hard to let it go_

**Morgan**

I sat on the floor across from the Diobhail and drew my knees up to my chest. I didn't start, just looked up when a raspy, deep voice spoke from the middle of the room.

"I thought that they would never leave."

I couldn't help but smile slightly, in spite of myself.

"I knew you were awake," I said quietly. "How much did you hear?"

The demon gave a low, mirthless chuckle. "Everything from 'Last time, they made a racket.' You know, I was fairly impressed. Those at the lodge were my best soldiers, and you managed to escape them."

"How did you find us?" I asked, my voice still soft.

"It was not difficult," he said simply. "Now, my question, Ms. Riordan, is how much time will pass before you allow your friends to know that I am not, as you say, 'out cold' anymore."

"I'm not planning on telling them," I said calmly. "Not before I can ask you some questions on my own."

"Ask away," he said, as lightly as one with a deep, menacing-sounding voice could.

"Why are you after us?" I whispered. "We haven't ever … I had never even heard of you until we checked the Akashic Records." The Diobhail was silent. "But you've obviously heard of me." I stood up slowly. I was taller than he was when I was standing on my feet.

"There aren't many who haven't heard of you, Ms. Riordan," the demon said with a satirical smile.

I smiled wanly. "Of course. Woodbane prodigy and all that crap." I sighed. "So … you want to kill my friends and I, don't you? I mean, that's why you've been chasing us across Ireland, isn't it, Muireadhach? Can I call you that, by the way? Muireadhach? I saw the inscription on your robe in runes." I paused. "It means 'chief'. You _are_ their leader."

"To a great many," he said, and in his voice I detected a hint of … what was it? Pride? Superiority? "More than you know."

"Tell me, then."

"A thousand here," he said. "You would be amazed how stealthy we can be when we are forced to come to the physical realm."

"A thousand, huh?" I asked, not put off at all. "Seems like a pretty low number for a guy of your stature. I mean, you're a Yao Ming, height-wise. I sort of assumed that you'd have this massive empire or something. Even Wyoming has more people than that."

"A thousand here," he whispered, "and five million in our home. The astral planes. Five million that I could summon instantly with a …" He demonstrated. "snap of my finger."

That was a bit more disturbing.

"We haven't done anything to you," I muttered. "Hunter and Sky have more experience with your type, of course … demons and monsters and whatnot …"

"The Diobhail are not demons or monsters," Muireadhach growled, and I sensed a small rise in the anger in his voice. "We are a proud race."

"How very _Lord of the Rings_," I said sarcastically.

"It is not your friends we want," he said firmly. "They do not concern us. They are strong, the two that you mention, but not as strong as you. Not as strong as the Woodbane prodigy, as you called yourself."

"So it's me," I said with a sigh. "Of course it's me. I'm the one that everyone's always after. Selene and Cal, my father, Amyranth …" I looked at him. "What do you want with me?"

"To warn you. To make you listen to reason."

"If you think I'm going to take advice from a demon –"

"I knew that you would react this way," he said. "So I thought …" He grinned grotesquely. "A presentation … a demonstration, if you will … would be more suitable."

I choked suddenly and quickly. The air around me suddenly was stifling. It smelled like burnt, rotting flesh. I could smell blood. I looked at the floor in front of me. A corpse was lying at my feet. A corpse with familiarly blonde hair and vivid green eyes. Green eyes that were bloodshot and staring upward, empty of life. Hunter was dead.

I stepped back in shock and almost tripped over an arm lying in my path. I whirled around and instantly covered my mouth to keep myself from vomiting. Bree and Sky were behind me, and I could tell instantly that both were dead. Their wrists were slit to their elbows and blood was pooling on the floor. Robbie was lying a few feet away. His skin was unnaturally pale, almost translucent. There was a gunshot wound in his chest. Raven was to my left, a deep stab wound embedded right in her heart. I gasped and cried out as my stomach gave a heave.

"Who …" I barely managed to choke out. "Who …" I couldn't stop myself. I vomited onto the floor, my stomach churning. Instead of feeling better, I felt even more sick. "Who … who did this?"

One word was all it took. Just a one-word answer from the demon in front of me.

"You."


	23. Renaissance

**Disclaimer**: 100 reviews! Yes, okay, it's probably only because Raynornlimegreen reviewed about 20 times, but that's just fine! Anywho … I probably won't be threatening to remove the story for a while again ; ) But that doesn't mean you should stop reviewing! So, um … read and review. As I've been saying. Ever since I first posted this story. Wow, that was in May last year … my, how the time flies. I definitely need to get my butt in motion and update more quickly. I'll work on that, I promise. This chapter's a little short, at least by my standards … sorry about that. It made more sense to cut it off here than to keep going, though. Next chapter will be longer, I promise. Just as a warning: pay attention in these next chapters! Things are going to start moving pretty fast! The song is Sarah McLachlan's. BTW, did anyone else see her concert on DirecTV Freeview? Awesome if I do say so myself :D

moon-faery69: I know that I'm not allowed to have Morgan and Hunter not together … not by the rules of life, apparently ; ) But … **Spoiler**: They're not getting back together until the end of the story (hides behind the computer chair so that she won't be bombarded with heavy objects) It's pretty profound when they do, though, and it comes with some heavy revelations on Morgan's part, so, in my mind, it's worth the wait. Plus, it fits with the storyline a lot better. I know that it seems like they've been apart forever, but it's only been about a week or less in the story, so … (sighs) It's coming, don't worry.

Raynornlimegreen: You never cease to amaze me ; ) Thanx for reviewing the parodies! Hehe, I love getting reviews, so I demand that you supply me with more!

unique-deflection: Thanks for your review! I'm glad that you like my story :D There's a cliffhanger at the end of this chapter, too … not to ruin the suspense or anything. Hopefully it's as good as this one!

MG: Sorry about some of the British references OO You're lucky not to have cheerleaders where you are, though. They're like a preppy, joyful plague … especially the ones at my school. _They're everywhere_!

TempestRaven: Thanks for your review! Did you read all of the chapters or just the first one? Oh, well. Keep reading and tell me if you still like it!

Aaaanywho … on with the story! Review when you finish!

**Part XXIII**: Renaissance

_Morning smiles  
Like the face of a newborn child  
Innocent unknowing  
Winter's end  
Promises of a long lost friend  
Speaks to me of comfort_

**Morgan**

I was panicking. Massively. I was shaking so badly that my voice sounded jumbled when I spoke.

"I would never do this. I-I can't –"

"You can," Muireadhach said firmly. "You will. Ever since you became a witch, you have been focused on fighting the dark magick in your blood that flows from your parents' lineages. You fight it as much as you can, as well as you know, but you neglect to understand what it is. You neglect to learn what it is that makes you the way that you are and what makes you so powerful." He sounded grim. "It will swallow you unless you learn what it truly is."

"I'm not evil," I whispered, my mind a haze. I wasn't listening to what he was saying. I couldn't listen. The glamour that he had created had long since disappeared, but I still saw it in my mind. My friends, dead on the floor. Bleeding. Their faces twisted in agony. Every time I blinked and my eyes closed, I saw Hunter's blank, lifeless eyes as if they were staring directly at me.

"You do not understand what evil _is_," Muireadhach growled.

I saw red. "I'm not evil!" I screamed. I launched myself at him and attacked him, hitting him with so much anger and rage that just poured out; I didn't even know where it was coming from. All I knew was that Muireadhach was in front of me, and I wanted to kill him. I punched him, kicked him, hitting his rough skin as many times as I could with as much force as I could muster. I was blind; I didn't even see what I was doing. I was relying on touch alone; he was in front of me, not fighting back, and I was yelling.

"You don't know me! You don't know who I am or where I come from! You don't know anything about my parents or my magick! You don't –"

Someone was pulling me away from him. I recognized Hunter's voice, yelling with frustration as he grabbed my arms and forced me back to my feet.

"Morgan, stop! What are you doing? What's going on here?"

"Let go of me!" I shrieked, fighting against him with everything that I had just been using to attack Muireadhach. I didn't even care that he was alive, that he was fine after seeing that glamour. I still wanted Muireadhach to pay. With a sudden mental incantation, Hunter spun away from me in shock. His hands looked burned, and my arms were scalding hot with my rage.

"I'm not finished yet."

I had grabbed Muireadhach and our minds were melding together. I had never even needed Sky to show me how to do a tath meanma treise lámh. I was leading Muireadhach, questioning him, probing his strangely human-like mind for information that I wanted, information that I needed. Faces flashed by, faces of Diobhail in a cloudy-like state. It was as if I were watching a dream, but I knew what I wanted. I saw myself, and my appearance shocked me. I was older, maybe in my early twenties, and I looked terrible. Like one of those druggie girls who are addicted to heroin by the time they're eighteen. My eyes, sullen and darkened, held no light, no humanity in them. My face was pale, pale white. I looked like a corpse, but the smile on my face meant that I was alive. It was more of a grin, really. It was twisted and uncaring. I couldn't see myself in those eyes.

I felt sudden ecstasy, such a feeling of delight and elation that I almost burst out laughing. Someone was laughing in my ear; maybe it really was me. The sounds around me of whisperings, stirrings, and quiet murmurs had suddenly stopped. Instead, screams filled the air. I felt that there was severe pain around me; I could almost touch it. But I was laughing; now I knew that it was me. Something about the agony around me was amazingly funny. It was like a high.

"I didn't …" I was pulling away, and suddenly I was staring in front of me at Muireadhach. I was out of the tath meanma, and suddenly everything was so much more real. The pain in my head, the pounding in my heart, the cold sweat covering me.

"No …" I murmured.

"Yes."

"Morgan?" Hunter was staring at me, his eyes wide.

"No …"

It would have been easy to pretend that I hadn't just seen what I had seen. I was breathing heavily, gasping for air that seemed like it would never fill my lungs.

Jumping up almost instantly to my feet, I did what the only clear thought on my mind was telling me to do. I ran.

_But I fear  
I have nothing to give  
I have so much to lose  
Here in this lonely place  
Tangled up in our embrace  
There's nothing I'd like  
Better than to fall  
But I fear I have nothing to give  
_

**Hunter**

I was sitting in the foyer, leaning against the wall, when the others arrived back. They had taken the car back out to look for a place to buy clothes, food, and the means for basic survival that had been left at the lodge in Portrush. Judging by the large paper bags that all four were carrying, I assumed that they had been successful.

"Here you go, Hunter," Sky said brightly, tossing a blue and white polo shirt, a black T-shirt, and a pair of khakis at me. "We found a small town about thirty minutes away. It had a clothing store and a general store, so we're set for a couple of days." She noticed what I thought must be abject frustration and misery on my face. "What happened?" she asked, much more quietly.

"It's Morgan."

I explained to them everything that had happened in their absence. When I finished recounting how Morgan had fled the dining room, the demon, and me after doing a tath meanma with the Diobhail, Bree, Robbie, and Raven were shocked into silence and Sky paled.

"Where is he?" she whispered. "The Diobhail?"

"I performed a mind control, binding, penetrating-type spell as quickly as I could," I said, staring at the floor, my mind feeling too overloaded to process thoughts and my head aching. "It's in a state of hypnosis … almost as if it's unconscious."

"And Morgan?"

"I don't know. She blocked me with magick from even reaching the second floor landing."

Bree took a cautious glance through the small window in the door leading to the dining room. From where she was standing, she could probably just barely see the demon chained to the column.

"God …" she whispered. "I still can't get over it … demons and spirits and …"

"Witches, oh, my?" I asked dryly.

No one laughed.

Sky looked up the stairs. "We need to get to Morgan."

"I've tried," I muttered. "She doesn't want to see anyone right now."

"Why?" Robbie asked. "What did she see when she did a tath meanma with the Diobhail?"

"I don't know. But I have a feeling that she doesn't want us to find out."

_Wind in time  
Rapes the flower trembling on the vine  
Nothing yields to shelter it  
From above  
They say temptation will destroy our love  
The never ending hunger  
_

**Morgan**

I was crying, sobbing so hard that as I pounded the floor with my fists, my eyes stung and my heart seared with pain.

"Maeve …" I whispered, my voice hitching. I pulled my real mother's Book of Shadows towards me out of my backpack, fingering the spine as tears continued to pour down my cheeks. "Maeve, help me … you're supposed to be my real mother, the good parent, the one who's not evil … help me understand … please …"

How was this happening? I had promised myself that I would never let Ciaran's influence drive me to practice dark magick. That experience with him, running through the woods as a wolf, had been enough to make me make up my mind.

But I had felt the rush. The oddly familiar rush of black magick, the ecstasy of it, the freedom of it, of knowing that nothing is standing in your way of having a good time. Of being free. I had felt my future self. She was addicted to that rush. She needed it; it had become a part of her, so much that she felt she couldn't function without it. And it was easy to let the magick flow from her and hurt people. Kill people. It felt good, and it was easy and … I shuddered. It was convenient.

"Mom," I whispered, "you're a good witch."

Or was she? Had she ever felt the elation? The joy in dark magick?

"Your magick … it's good …"

But she had been with Ciaran MacEwan … and he was evil. She knew of his heritage and yet she was still with him. She still conceived a child with him. Me.

Did it mean anything? My mother's good heritage? The fact that Belwicket had given up black magick? The Ballynigel cemetery was a place of resting, a place where my family would hopefully be able to rest after centuries of persecution, after being the victims of the dark wave sent by my father's ancestry.

But the Diobhail had infiltrated its secrecy. They had found it and made it the center of their energy. They had defaced my grandmother's grave, and no one, nothing had stopped them. It was too easy for them.

Was my mother's lineage too weak to save itself? Or did it never intend to in the first place?

"Mom … I need your help. I need you to help me understand."

I don't know how long I sat there, just thinking. I looked up from my mother's Book of Shadows a while later. A few minutes. Maybe hours. I took a deep breath and suddenly realized how calm I felt. My heart had slowed to a steady beat, content as if I had been relaxing the day away. My eyes were no longer wet, and when I looked in the mirror, the redness had receded.

They looked a little empty.

"It's going to take some getting used to," I whispered under my breath. Maybe I was trying to reassure myself. "But it will be easier. The way things used to be. Simple. Before things got rough and confusing and complicated. Before doing little common things didn't seem familiar anymore. Before, every time I did something, I ended up hurting one of my friends."

_You can't escape this_, an annoying little voice in my head whispered.

"No," I murmured. "But I can try."

I walked downstairs, sensing my friends in the kitchen. I didn't look at the dining room as I passed it in the hall. When I stepped into the kitchen, everyone looked up from where they were sitting at the table. They were all wearing the new clothes that they must have found somewhere. Bree was wearing a light blue tank top with a butterfly silk-screened onto it, Raven was wearing a red top with a black duster, and Sky had a white blouse. Hunter immediately got up, but I held up a hand.

"Hunter," I said, not needing a transition or greeting. "Hunter, I need to ask you something."

He looked a little surprised. "Anything."

I looked at him coldly. "Do you love me?"

"You know I do."

I nodded internally. This might not be so hard after all. "Then I need you to do something for me."

He didn't say anything, just watched me. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.

"I need you to strip me of my powers."

_But I fear  
I have nothing to give  
I have so much to lose  
Here in this lonely place  
Tangled up in our embrace  
There's nothing I'd like  
Better than to fall  
But I fear_

_I have nothing to give  
I have so much to lose  
I have nothing to give  
We have so much to lose_


	24. Staring at the Sun

**Disclaimer**: Geez, the cliffhangers just keep coming, don't they? Um … not to hurt anyone in a serious way or anything, but … there's another one at the end of this chapter? (hides) (doesn't give moon-faery69 another threat) Hehe … but, seriously, keep reviewing or – no! No more threats! Just review and you'll make me very happy:D Oh, and, um, if the part where two certain people (you'll see what I mean) come back seems a little short and underdone, it's supposed to be. Try to see the scene in your head and you'll get it … at least, you should get it … if you don't, just complain in a review. Flames will be used to roast marshmallows!

moon-faery69: Lol, yes, Morgan and Hunter do eventually get back together. I'm not that mean. And … um … who said anything about someone dying at the end? (starts to sweat inexplicably) Who said anything? Who have you been talking to? _Tell me_!

huge fan: Whee, reviews! I like reviews, in case you couldn't tell :D Thanks for the compliment! I hope it won't take me ten days to post this chapter … hmm … I really need to work on updating more quickly.

Raynornlimegreen: Waah! I'm so sorry I haven't been reviewing your story! I just posted another one :D I'm so absentminded … I read something and then think that I click "review" and actually review and then I don't … I'm just stupid that way :P Please accept this chapter as a token of my apologies!

**Part XXIV**: Staring at the Sun

_Maybe life is like a ride on a freeway  
__Dodging bullets while you're trying to find your way  
__Everyone's around  
__But no one does a damn thing  
__It brings me down, but I won't let them_

**Alexis**

I spent most of my days now in a haze. Actually, all of my days. The doctors had pumped me with so many drugs and anesthesia that the only time I actually felt the bed and pillows that I was lying on was when some nurse forgot to crank up the drip again. I had spent long enough in hospitals to know that I probably had a feeding tube in my arm or somewhere else.

I spent all of my time in a haze because … the alternative? Yeah, pretty sure it's worse.

It was the most crushing mental defeat I had ever experienced. Physical as well as mental, I suppose. After two years of being bed-ridden, of being nothing but another cripple taking up valuable space in the overcrowded hospital, I had been allowed back into the world again. I had been allowed to walk again. I didn't have to be a genius or even psychic to know that I wouldn't ever be able to walk again. The council had released its fury, and everyone … Hunter, Sky, me … had to pay the price.

Sky … Goddess, just the thought of her is enough to make me want to cry again. I had never really cried before, not even after my mother died, but it seemed that every minute now I had something that I wanted to cry about. She had saved me from the council. I owed her my life. But I guess none of that mattered. I had thought that she was something different. I thought that she might be one of the precious few people in my life who ever thought I was worthwhile.

In my head I could hear her telling me that it wasn't my fault … or hers, either, for a matter of fact. Pressing problems, urgent worries were keeping her away. Something was about to happen, I could sense that. Something that would probably ensure that I'd never see her again. Or anyone else.

I knew that she wasn't away by choice. It was just easier to believe that after the doctors wheeled me away that night was the last time that I'd ever have to see her. It just made things simpler.

I bit my lip slightly. I could hear distant yelling. What was it? The voice sounded familiar. I closed my eyes and concentrated as a picture began to swim before my eyes.

_Though you hear me  
I don't think that you relate  
My will is something  
That you can't confiscate  
So forgive me, but I won't be frustrated  
By destruction in your eyes  
As you're staring at the sun_

**Morgan**

Hunter began to shake his head immediately, violently. "What? Why, Morgan? Why would you want me to do something like that?"

"It's the only way," I said. "I've seen the future, Hunter, and, to be frank, things aren't as nice as I used to think they'd turn out." I just looked at him. "You have to take my word on this. I would never be asking you if I didn't think it was the right thing to do."

"The right thing to do?" he cried, his voice shocked. "Do you have _any _idea what it is that you're asking me? You're asking me to take away your magick forever."

"I know."

"Do you know what it does to people? Were you even paying attention when we stripped David Redstone of his powers? When your father lost his?"

"I was there, Hunter. I know what happened."

"Then you know that it's just a matter of time before it's not just your magick you've lost, it's your mind, too." His eyes were wide with shock and horror. I met them unwaveringly. "Morgan, you haven't been a witch for very long, but I know you. It will destroy you. Whatever you saw in the future cannot have been bad enough to warrant –"

"It was," I said, quelling the small twinge of pain I felt at remembering seeing my friends' dead bodies. Feeling my future self. My emotions. "It was bad enough and, believe me, I've thought this out. I'm very serious and I'm not overreacting."

"Morgan, you don't know what you're asking me!"

"I'm asking you to strip me of my powers," I said firmly. I paused. "Make it so that I can't hurt people anymore. Ever."

"Morgan …" Bree had spoken up from the corner of the room. Her deep brown eyes were filled with confusion. "Morgan, why do you want to do this? What did you see in your future?"

"It was everyone's future," I whispered. "Not just mine. Because … that's it. My future is everyone's future. Their destiny … their moment of death depends on me. When I choose to kill them."

"Morgan, you're not making sense," Hunter said loudly, a kind of desperation in his voice.

"I killed people. A lot of people. Hurt dozens more. That's why Muireadhach and the Diobhail have been tailing us across Ireland. They're trying to prevent my future from coming true. I heard what he said. I massacred his clan. They were just one group among millions. They were just some of the innocents … all of them—men, women, children … it didn't matter. They were just some of the ones that I chose to hurt … willingly. The Diobhail were the only ones with enough initiative to come here and try to stop me."

"Morgan, that's crazy," Robbie whispered, his voice tight. "You would never hurt anyone."

"Wouldn't I?" I whispered. "It seems that it's all I've ever done. Cal and Selene … I killed them." I saw Hunter about to protest, and I raised my voice. "Don't try to deny it, Hunter. I killed them! I killed them and then life just continued as usual!" A rare note of bitter sarcasm slipped into my voice. "Never mind the fact that she just killed two people, Morgan's life is just fine." I looked away, feeling tears burn my eyes for a moment before receding. "And the times I've come so close … I almost killed you, Hunter. I threw a knife at your neck. I almost got you killed, too, at that Amyranth cell in New York City. I almost attacked you that night that I shape-shifted with Ciaran. The number of accidents … it's just-it's too many."

"Morgan, that happens to everyone, every witch with strong powers –"

"You're a witch with strong powers," I said sullenly. "So is Sky. I've never seen the two of you shoot someone with witch fire just because you wanted to cause them pain. Albeit, Bakker was trying to rape my little sister, so he kind of deserved it, but I wanted to hurt him so badly. I've never seen the two of you put a spell on someone's car and almost cause them to crash just because he flicked you off when he was driving down the street at night."

I shook my head sadly.

"Too many times … too quickly. Something always stopped them from happening, though … and often it wasn't in my control. Left in my care … those people would have suffered even more."

I looked Bree in the eyes. "And you don't want to know what I saw in the future. You don't want to know what I did to you. To all of you. Just know that it was … awful. Cruel. Evil and sick and twisted. And preventable."

"Morgan …" Hunter's voice was pleading now, almost like a child's.

"I need this," I whispered. "I need this to happen, Hunter. I need this to happen so that I know for sure that you will be safe. That all of you will be safe. That the world isn't going to go to hell when something ticks me off." I paused. "The consequences could be a lot worse, Hunter … if you don't do this for me."

It was so silent in that kitchen that I could hear the wind blowing outside. It was howling mournfully, and I shivered. Hunter wasn't looking at me, staring at the floor with a pained expression on his face. Bree looked frozen in time, staring off into space. Robbie looked a little angry.

"It's Morgan's choice," Bree whispered finally, still staring off into space. "Isn't it? It's her choice to decide what happens to her."

"Excuse me?" Hunter whispered, snapping his head around to stare at her.

"She's always been the responsible one," Bree continued. "The smart one. If this is what she wants, then … we should support her."

I couldn't help but smile at Bree slightly. Unfortunately, Robbie took another angle.

"How can you possibly agree to this?" he demanded, rounding on Bree with a fury that I hadn't seen in him in … well, ever. "This is our best friend we're talking about!"

"Robbie, she is a person!" Bree yelled, raising her voice to match the volume of his. "She has the right to do what she thinks should be done!"

"So you think that stripping her of her powers is going to help?" Robbie asked incredulously. "You heard what Hunter said! It'll drive her insane!"

"Um, hello, guys?" I asked. "Friend in question right here." I pointed to myself. "I know what I'm doing."

Robbie spoke through gritted teeth. "If you are really serious about this, Morgan, then you _don't_ know what you're doing."

"Robbie, she's a responsible adult," Sky said, finally speaking up from the table. "Not legally, of course, but she is mature enough to –"

Hunter stared at his cousin, stunned. "_You want to let her do this_?"

"Well, seeing as I cannot really do that much to stop her and considering that no one else has suggested another plan –"

"Oh, how about this one: she doesn't do it?" Robbie yelled furiously.

"Robbie, I know that you're upset, but there's nothing you can do to stop me!" I said forcefully.

"Because I'm not a blood witch, right?" Robbie asked, his voice pained. "My opinion doesn't matter because I'm not a blood witch."

"I never said that!"

"You didn't have to. It's not exactly a secret that you still think that we don't know what we're talking about. Just because we're not blood witches like the rest of you. But this isn't something you have to be a blood witch to understand. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm talking about losing my best friend."

"Robbie, I …" I sighed. This was hurting so much … it hurt so much to do this to my friends. But I knew … I remembered how much I had hurt them … how much I _would _hurt them in the future. This had to be done. "I just can't deal with this right now."

"Well, get ready to!" he cried. "Morgan, do you realize what it is you're considering? If you don't have your powers, it'll be just Hunter and Sky to make sure that the Diobhail don't kill us all!"

"Robbie, if I didn't have my powers anymore, there'd be no reason for them to –"

"Oh, please. And I'm supposed to believe that they'll just let us walk away unscathed? That this isn't some sort of trap? You'll be walking right into Muireadhach's scaly, disfigured hands!"

All of us jumped suddenly as the kitchen door swung open with a loud, earsplitting creak. To my surprise, Killian and Mike walked in. Killian glared at all of us.

"Where in the hell have you lot been? We went back to the lodge in Portrush and it was completely deserted! You had us worried sick. But never mind that. So …" Killian clapped his hands together eagerly. "What did we miss?"

A pause.

"Robbie, would you just listen to her?" Bree cried, her face reddening.

"This isn't helping the situation," Sky was saying.

"No one is accepting the fact that this plan has no basis in reality!" Robbie yelled.

"Robbie, I don't want your acceptance! I just want your support!"

"How can you expect us to support you on this?" Hunter demanded angrily. "You don't understand what you're asking!"

We were yelling. The noise pounded inside my head, killing me, but I needed to make them understand.

"You can't just go and do this, Morgan!" Robbie was now shouting.

"_Everybody shut up_!" Raven suddenly yelled, louder than anyone else who had been shouting their heads off. We all stopped and stared at her, surprised. She was staring at all of us. "God, would you look at yourselves? I know this is challenging, but let's go for a voice of reason here and –"

"Raven, will you just back off?" Robbie demanded. "This isn't about you! In fact, the only reason that you're even here is because Sky is and because she, for reasons unfathomable to me, actually cares about you. Don't start acting like your opinion actually matters around here!"

I stared at Robbie, a new anger coursing through me. Didn't he see what a hypocrite he was being? How unfounded his accusations were? I sighed. I had had enough of this.

_If I seem bleak  
Well, you'd be correct  
And if I don't speak  
It's because I get disconnected  
But I won't be burned by the reflection  
Of the fire in your eyes  
As you're staring at the sun_

**Sky**

I got up from her chair and began to stalk towards Robbie, raging, my eyes flashing dangerously. "How _dare _you say that to –"

Raven grabbed my arm and pulled me back. "Baby, don't."

"He can't say things like that to you!"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Morgan's gone."

As everyone's gaze immediately snapped to the door, where Morgan had just been standing, I felt a gasp rise in my throat that never quite made it out of my mouth. She wasn't there.

"Oh, Goddess, no …" Hunter whispered under his breath. He took off running out of the kitchen, his footsteps pounding furiously down the hall. I looked at Robbie, Bree, Raven, Mike, and Killian for a split second before we crowded out of the kitchen after him.

_When I ran, I didn't feel like a runaway  
__When I escaped, I didn't feel like I got away  
__There's more to living than only surviving  
__Maybe I'm not there  
__But I'm still trying_

**Morgan**

The time manipulator chant worked extremely well, if I do say so myself. It was nothing too drastic; it just marginally slowed the flow of time. I had found it in Maeve's Book of Shadows. She used to use it when her mother was calling her in for supper and she wanted a few extra minutes with her friends. I had never used it before, but all of my friends' yelling had slowed down. They hadn't noticed me slip out.

I looked at Muireadhach expectantly as I stepped into the dining room.

"If my friends won't help me, I know you will."

"Why do you assume that?"

"Because you want to prevent the future just as much as I do."

_If I seem bleak  
Well, you'd be correct  
And if I don't speak  
It's because I get disconnected  
But I won't be burned by the reflection  
Of the fire in your eyes  
As you're staring at the sun_

**Hunter**

I stared at the column in front of me, too stunned to say anything. I heard a sharp intake of breath from behind me.

"Oh, God …" Bree whispered.

Hunter's voice was tight. "There are traces of her magick on them."

The chains that once held Muireadhach were hanging limply on the column, a silent memorial to the powerful creature they had once captured and bound.

"You wouldn't do it, Hunter. That's why … you wouldn't do this, so she found someone who was powerful enough to do it anyway."

"She went to them … alone."

_Though you hear me  
I don't think that you relate  
My will is something  
That you can't confiscate  
So forgive me, but I won't be frustrated  
By destruction in your eyes  
As you're staring at the sun_


	25. Battalion

**Disclaimer**: I think it gets pretty redundant after a while to keep saying that I don't own the characters used in this story. But … once again … just because someone will probably try to sue me if I don't credit Cate Tiernan … I don't own the _Sweep _series. As if I would be posting on if I really did … but anywho … the song belongs to Rachael Yamagata. That's a funny last name. (starts to laugh) Haha … funny name … lol, okay, on with the thanks and story. **Read and review**!

moon-faery69: Lol, sorry about the cliffhangers … again … and again … things are just picking up really quickly in the story and I want to end each chapter in a way that makes you all want to read the next one :O Please don't get mad at me! I'm trying my best, I swear!

Mike: Hehe, thanks, Mad-Man :D And why are you hardly ever online anymore? I command you to be online so I can talk to you!

Raynornlimegreen: Once again … sorry for the cliffhangers! Please don't hate me! It just makes you anticipate the next chapter more, doesn't it? Hmm … maybe I should work on that. Anywho, keep reviewing or I'll be very sad :( The chapter ends at kind of a pivotal point, but it's not _really _a cliffhanger … I guess … it's a mini-cliffhanger … definitely not the caliber of the one from the last few chapters, I promise :D

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: As they say in German, _danke_! I love reviews :D So finish the story and give me more!

sunshine-faery: Okay, yes, you didn't review this story, but I feel the need to ask you a couple questions about the review you posted on "Sweep: The Random Parodies". You've reviewed it before and always said good things about it. It's on your list of favorite stories, for the love of everything holy. So … yeah, not really seeing where it is you're coming from when you say that I stink at writing. Are you bipolar or does your memory just really suck?

**Part XXV**: Battalion

_I think about how it might have been  
We'd spend our days traveling  
It's not that I don't understand you  
It's not that I don't want to be with you  
But you only wanted me  
The way you wanted me_

**Morgan**

I felt strangely calm, more calm than I probably should have, given the situation. I didn't know what it was; I was walking down a grassy path in the Irish countryside in broad daylight with the leader of a clan of demons who had agreed to have his soldiers perform a ritual to strip me of my powers. I should have been quaking in my shoes, searching desperately for a way to escape this fate that I had brought upon myself.

But I wasn't. As a calm breeze rippled around us, blowing my hair back gently, and my feet mechanically moved one foot in front of the other down the path, I wasn't thinking about the Diobhail or Muireadhach or Hunter or any of my friends. I was thinking about Mary K.

I remembered how, when I was in eighth grade and she was in sixth, our grandmother, affectionately dubbed "Grams", had passed away from leukemia. We had flown to Chicago for the funeral, and I remembered how quiet Mary K had been at the service. She hadn't said anything while Mom cried, Dad tried to console her, and I, of course, was bawling my eyes out. At the wake, I had asked Mary K why she hadn't been crying, but I think I sort of already knew the answer … even back then. It was too weird for her. It was too much change for an eleven-year-old to comprehend. She just looked lost. I remembered her taking my hand and whispering, "Morgan? Don't ever change."

I couldn't help but feel that I had dreadfully let her down as I reminisced on that painful memory. "Don't worry," I whispered, almost hoping that she could hear me. "No more changes … not anymore."

Muireadhach looked over at me curiously. I guess he had heard me whispering to myself like a crazy person.

"Why the long face, Miss Riordan?" he asked, his gruff voice sounding awkward when he was asking a question considered caring in some circles. "You are about to save your friends and your future, and yet you appear glum."

"I'm about to have my powers stripped by otherworldly demons," I said shortly. "Do you expect me to be jumping for joy?"

He didn't answer. I just looked to my feet as we kept walking. The swishing of Muireadhach's robes and the occasional twitter of some bird or other were the only sounds that I could hear. It was strangely silent.

I had been about to look up at Muireadhach and ask him how much farther we had to walk when suddenly I received my answer. I had lifted my eyes up from the ground and seen something that took my breath away.

We were back at the Ballynigel cemetery.

I couldn't seem to talk. I looked to Muireadhach in confusion, narrowing my eyes against the blinding sun.

"What … but how, we were just -"

He smiled in a gruesome sort of way. "Oh, please. You didn't really think that you had made it all the way to the coast, did you?"

I stared between him and the cemetery.

"And … it's bigger."

"Of course," Muireadhach said simply. "Not all of these house actual bodies, mind. But a tribute to all who died here … that is what this cemetery is. Death has built their monuments for them."

The Ballynigel cemetery that I had visited before was not the one that lay in front of me, but I could see my grandmother's grave in the distance. Now, the graves were spread out, and there were thousands more of them, covering the nearby landscape like macabre lawn ornaments. Mausoleums and tombs were hidden in the shadows of the trees, which suddenly seemed dark and foreboding. I could see names written in stone above the doors. Johnson. MacLeon. O'Connell. Graves and tombs and mausoleums that hadn't been there before were now plain to my eyes.

And the Diobhail. They were there, and I could see almost every single one of them. Milling around the cemetery like it was their hideout … which I reminded myself that it was. This was the place that they had chosen to watch us. I shivered slightly, remembering when Hunter, Sky, the others, and I had come here to search for any clues about the Diobhail before. They had probably been watching us the whole time, hidden beneath their glamours and illusory magick.

I must have stopped walking, because suddenly I felt a tug of something invisible behind my back that pushed me forward, following Muireadhach like a dog on a leash.

"Come," he said steadily. "It's almost time."

_So I will head out alone  
And hope for the best  
And we can hang our heads down  
As we skip the goodbyes_

**Alexis**

The television in my room was tuned to Comedy Central, but my eyes weren't glued to _The Daily Show with Jon Stewart_ as they normally would have been. I was watching Morgan walking towards a cemetery, and I bit my lip.

"Morgan, no …" I whispered. "It's a trap, you know it is …"

I groaned with sheer frustration. This hurt so much. I was watching her walk into her death and there was nothing I could do about it.

_You can tell the world  
What you want them to hear  
I've got nothing left to lose, my dear  
So, I'm up for the little white lies  
But you and I  
Know the reason why  
I'm gone, and you're still there  
I'm gone, and you're still there  
I'm gone, and you're still there_

**Killian**

Judging by the sour looks that Bree was sending my way with sheer malevolence, I supposed she was mad that I wasn't worrying about Morgan as much as everyone else was. I really wanted to prove her wrong, as well; forgive me if I'm not as incapable of dealing with massive emotion as the English boy Giomanach.

He was a wreck, hyperventilating for all that he was worth. "Oh, Goddess, oh, Goddess, oh, Goddess, oh -"

Athar hit him on the arm. I had been about two seconds away from doing that myself. "Hunter, that isn't helping," she pointed out. "We need to find Morgan before she -"

"How can we trust you on this?" Robbie demanded. "You wanted her to do this!"

I was starting to see how this could end up transforming, once again, into the shouting match that Mike and I had walked in on less than ten minutes ago. Athar looked at him furiously.

"I supported her right to have her powers stripped, if need be," she said through gritted teeth. "I _never _suggested that going to Muireadhach and the Diobhail would be the appropriate solution." She bit her lip. "And it doesn't matter now. We're too distracted to wage a successful rescue attempt. Chasing after her now would be suicide."

"So, what, we're just going to sit here and let them take her?" Robbie cried.

Athar glared at him. "If you want to go raging into their camp without any protection or, apparently, common sense, then be my guest! _But we can't go against them_! For all we know, there could be thousands of them there just waiting for us to show up!"

"It makes sense, though, doesn't it?" Bree whispered in a melancholy tone. "They have powerful magick … they're probably more than willing to strip her of her powers."

"If they don't kill her first," Giomanach said grimly.

At this, Mike took me aside.

"Killian, we have to do something."

I scoffed. "Like what? Athar does have a point. We have no way to defend ourselves against them, no way to rescue her -"

"We're blood witches," Mike said firmly. "Isn't that enough?"

I sighed. "Mike, I may not be the most responsible person on the face of the earth, but I do have some common sense. When she said suicide, she wasn't kidding!"

"Killian, for all we know, they could be torturing her by now, or worse. Sky wants to wait to come up with a plan, but there's not _time_. We need to get her back now before something happens!"

I could see the desperation in his eyes, and, as unwilling as I was to admit it, he had a very valid point. How long could we expect Morgan to hold her own against those creatures, if in fact she was even trying to fight them? What would happen if they were left alone to have their way with her? I didn't doubt even for a moment that they wanted to do more than strip her of her powers. Judging from Giomanach and Athar's descriptions, it sounded quite as if they would just skip straight to killing her.

_I'll buy a magazine searching for your face  
From coast to coast  
Or wherever I find my place  
I'll track you on the radio,  
And I'll sign your list in a different name  
But as close as I get to you  
It's not the same_

**Sky**

"I can't help but be a little surprised at Killian," Raven said quietly as she sat down on the bed.

"Yes," I said, quite surprised myself. "He's quite a public speaker. He even had me convinced by the end of that impromptu pep talk."

Somehow, Killian had managed to string together a … speech, of sorts, I suppose it could be called. I sighed. He had won Bree, Robbie, and Hunter over quite easily, and I had little choice to concede to the idea of immediately going after Morgan. I had no idea how we would go about doing it … even less of an idea of whether or not, in any universe, we could be successful. And yet we were leaving in less than five minutes.

"Are you sure you want Robbie and Bree and I there?" Raven asked quietly. "Won't we just be a distraction?"

"We need you there," I said softly, brushing back a strand of her hair. "_I_ need you there." I looked at her for a moment, and she just looked back at me, our gazes meeting.

"The scary part is that I sort of understand where he's coming from," I whispered. "Muireadhach, I mean. Morgan killed his entire clan in the future … his family, his entire race … I can't imagine that happening to me, and yet … I know exactly what I would do if it ever did. If I thought someone was going to hurt you …" I broke off as tears came to my eyes. "There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect you."

Raven looked close to tears herself.

"Let's hope it never comes to that." I just nodded as I tried to blink away my tears. The thought that I could lose her tonight, or any of the others, for that matter, was too much to bear … but this was something we needed to do. She leaned in and kissed me softly, and that moment seemed to last forever. It just felt like an instant later, though, when I heard Hunter calling us back downstairs.

"Ready?" Raven whispered.

"Not in the slightest."

_So I will head out alone  
And hope for the best  
We can pat ourselves on the back  
And say that we tried  
And if one of us makes it big  
We can spill our regrets  
And talk about how the love never dies_

**Bree**

"Hey, Robbie?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think this is it?"

"Do I think what is what?"

"The … last battle. Like on TV? The one where you know that if you walk into it you're not walking out but you walk in anyway?"

"… It might be."

"Do you think we're all going to make it?"

"… I don't think it's … I don't think that's possible. We interrupt their ritual … and they make sure that as many of us as possible aren't allowed to leave."

"It's so weird, you know? We might never get to graduate. We might never get to go to college. We might never get to do all the stuff that's supposed to be coming for us."

"I know."

"Do you remember that personality test we had to take for career week in eighth grade? Remember how one of the questions on it was 'How much would you be willing to sacrifice for someone you love?' And how the answers ranged from ten dollars to your life?"

"I remember."

"I never thought I'd have to take that risk. But … now that it's here … I'm not scared. I might die tonight. We all might die tonight. And … I'm not scared. We're doing this to save Morgan, and … I want to save her more than I want to make sure that I stay alive. … Is that weird? I mean, is that, like, totally out of line with human emotions?"

"… No, Bree. It's not weird at all."

_But you and I know the reason why  
I'm gone, and you're still there  
I'm gone, and you're still there  
I'm gone, and you're still there_

Hunter met us all back down in the entrance hall. There was a kind of surreal silence around us. Mike and Killian looked a little scared but determined. I really admired them; if I had a sibling and it was them in trouble …

"Ready to go?" Hunter asked, his voice tight.

Sky whispered "yes", and Robbie just nodded mutely.

"Good. Let's go."

_So steal the show and do your best  
To cover the tracks that I have left  
I wish you well  
And hope you find  
Whatever you're looking for  
I might have changed my mind  
But you've only shown me the door_

_So I will head out alone  
And hope for the best  
We can pat ourselves on the back  
And say that we tried  
And if one of us makes it big  
We can spill our regrets  
And talk about how the love never dies_


	26. Facade

**Disclaimer**: First of all, thank you to everyone for so many reviews! … Especially MIDNIGHT-PIXIE, who decided to take a leaf out of Raynornlimegreen's book and review about 20 times :D I love it when people do that! Lol, please read and review this chapter when you're done! Oh, and BTW, I'm trying to write this while watching _The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy _and listening to the Counting Crows, so if I seem a little distracted … lol, really, though, I'm good. The song is Bell X1's "Eve, the Apple of my Eye". Also, one of Bree's lines comes from the last episode of _BtVS_. I just think it's a really good line :) Anywho, questions, comments, flames, praise … all are welcome in reviews! So … um … **REVIEW**!

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Thanks for your numerous reviews! Lol, I'm so glad that you like my story :D It does an author good to have people respond so enthusiastically (especially if that author is me!). You're so lucky that you're 25 Irish … I'm 75 German and 25 Swiss, but there's not much I wouldn't give to be from somewhere in the British Isles :P But, ick … I'd cry if my parents sent me to a Catholic school. Feel better soon so you can laugh without hurting yourself!

Raynornlimegreen: What would I do without your constant reviews? I love them all! Thank you sooo much :D About "The Past is Never Far" … I don't know … it's hard to give advice about what should happen next when I don't know exactly what direction you want to take the story in. I would finish out the battles/war with the dark witches, see how long that takes, and then decide if you want to deal with the aftermath or end it hopefully with a victory (please?).

Taintedpromises: Thanx for the compliments :D Have I mentioned how much I love your new pen name? I don't think I have, so here goes: I love your new pen name! I'm really, truly sorry about the cliffhangers (insert embarrassed silence) but they just keep coming to me … lol, I've actually had the story up until the ending planned out since pretty much Part 3, so the chapters just have to stop where I think it fits best … I'll send you a dozen coupons for genuine Texas-style Blue Bell ice cream to cheer you up, though! My dad has a whole shoebox of them! It's hard to believe I live in Texas, isn't it? Believe me, it's not willingly. I'm getting out of here as soon as I graduate high school.

LS: Thank you so much for your review! I love getting feedback from new people, so keep it coming! I use many different songs in the chapters—just whatever I think goes well with the chapter—and normally I give the artist credit in the disclaimer. I usually use songs that I have on random CDs or that I've heard on the radio or on TV (shows like _The OC, Charmed, _and _Buffy _have awesome soundtracks) but here's a list of the songs I've used since I started putting them in:

Part 7 – "My Last Breath" – Evanescence  
Part 8 – "That Kind of Love" – Alison Krauss  
Part 9 – "The Reason" – Hoobastank (don't you love saying that word?)  
Part 11 – "Maybe I'm Amazed" – Jem  
Part 12 – "Calling the Moon" – Dar Williams  
Part 13 – "Story of a Girl" – 9 Days  
Part 14 – "Fallen Angels" – Aerosmith  
Part 16 – "It's Only Love" – Heather Nova  
Part 17 – "Displaced" – Azure Ray  
Part 18 – "Missing" – Evanescence  
Part 19 – "Early One Morning" – Nana Mouskouri  
Part 20 – "Beautiful Disaster" – Kelly Clarkson  
Part 21 – "Don't Leave Home" – Dido  
Part 22 – "Simple and Clean" – Utada Hikaru  
Part 23 – "Fear" – Sarah McLachlan  
Part 24 – "Staring at the Sun" – Offspring  
Part 25 – "Reason Why" – Rachael Yamagata  
Part 26 – "Eve, the Apple of my Eye" – Bell X1

Anyway, enough stalling on my part! On with the story!

**Part XXVI**: Facade

**Morgan**

"Is this all really necessary?" I asked rhetorically, holding up my bound wrists, which were chained to the wall of the mausoleum. The cemetery had turned into one of the most wretched places that I had ever been in my entire life … although they were not nearly as bad as Hell's Kitchen in New York City, I had to admit. I felt a little shiver arise and die before it made it past my skin as something scurried in the shadows of the tomb and winced when a shoe stepped on it with a loud crunch.

"Do not speak," the demon said.

"You're not the one in charge," I said. "Your leader said that I could be as much fuss as I wanted."

The demon with which I was conversing—a strange notion, to be sure, but what else is there to do when you're locked in a mausoleum and chained to the wall?—was one that I had never seen before. It was a woman.

Or, at least, I thought it was. I hadn't taken AP Anatomy like a couple of juniors had last year, so I wouldn't know for sure. Its … or is it _her_? Her hair was long, black, and sort of dirty-looking, but that, plus her voice, more feminine but still deep and croaky like I realized all of the Diobhail's must be, had me convinced that maybe I was among the fairer sex.

She was glaring at me, her face eerily illuminated by the candle she was holding. It was dark in the mausoleum; a couple of candles and torches were burning in the sconces on the walls, but the door was shut tight and no light was leaking in from the outside. I vaguely wondered what time it was; was it dark already?

"Mortal flesh," she whispered, staring with a sort of disgusted yet engrossed look on her face. "It is disgusting. It crawls." She looked at the torch in the wall to my left with a kind of longing that seriously worried me. "It burns so easily."

"Don't you dare," I whispered through gritted teeth.

She snapped her head around to glare at me. "Why do you speak to me? Do you think yourself fit to speak to me, human scum?" I cried out in sudden pain as a cold hand slapped my face hard; I quickly bit my tongue to keep from whimpering. My cheek stung painfully.

"Do you think yourself fit to bargain with us?" she continued. "Bargain with the Diobhail when you yourself are nothing but scum?" The ancient name of her clan sounded foreign to me, even though it was the only thing that had been resonating in my head for the past few days. I just smiled sweetly at her. Maybe it was the adrenaline rushing through me in fear, but I felt cocky.

"Well, sure, humans might not be the greatest species of them all, but still …" I shrugged. "It's better than anything you could ever hope to be."

I knew that I had hit a prideful nerve. The Diobhail midwife gave an unearthly growl, somewhere between nails on a chalkboard and a dog barking, and lunged at me. I closed my eyes reflexively and pulled my knees to my chest, but her attack never came. Opening my eyes, I saw that two other nursemaids were restraining her.

"Do not, Mistress Bhanaltra!" one of them cried desperately.

"She is not worth it," the other one said, a harder edge to her voice. "The human scum is not worthy of our time. Lord Muireadhach wishes her to be unharmed when he performs the ritual."

Bhanaltra gave a gruesome smile that terrified me to the core. "Ah, yes … the ritual … the ritual of which our young friend is so unaware."

I narrowed my eyes. I knew how a ritual to strip people of their powers went. Unfortunately, that was some knowledge I could claim. "What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.

Bhanaltra chuckled slightly. "Oh, come now. Did you ever for one moment believe that our Lord Muireadhach would spare your life?" A cold feeling was beginning to spread through me. "No. You will die tonight." As a second thought, she added, "Hopefully along with the rest of your filthy race."

I stared. "But Muireadhach said he would just –"

I cried out again as Bhanaltra's fist came slamming down on my face. My wrists shot with pain as the force of her blow sent me to the ground and the chains holding me up rattled and pulled against my skin. Tears swam before my eyes with the sting of the blow.

"Do you think yourself worthy to speak his name?" Bhanaltra demanded. When I didn't answer, she raised her voice to a yell. "_Do you_?"

"Mistress …" one of the other midwives whispered in a reminding sort of tone, as if Bhanaltra were a little kid misbehaving in church. She gave a forced sigh of calm and a tight grin that made my skin crawl.

"Do not fear, human scum." Her eyes were suddenly alight with a kind of distorted triumph. "You will soon see the true power of the Diobhail, and then you will understand." Her voice lowered to an almost unbearable level. It rumbled in my ears and only reinforced my constant, banging headache. "I hope that I will see you die. I will take great pleasure in desecrating your corpse."

She turned away, and my heart pounded with fear. I looked around me desperately, a kind of primal terror coursing through me.

_Hunter_? I whispered in my mind. _Hunter, where are you? _

Bhanaltra looked back at me over her shoulder, a derisive, ghastly grin on her face.

"Do not try to message your fellow rubbish. Your weak powers cannot penetrate the magick of this establishment."

I glared at her. "I am not weak," I whispered.

A furious expression crossed Bhanaltra's disfigured face. She strode forward, something akin to hate in her dark eyes.

"We shall see about that."

She raised her arm, and I screamed as a bolt of magick collided with me. A moment of sheer, excruciating pain was all that I knew before my body collapsed against the wall. Before the blackness engulfed me, though, I felt something picking me up, lifting me off the ground. I faded into unconsciousness, whispering "What …"

_If I had you here  
__I'd clip your wings  
__Snap you up and leave you sprawling on my pin  
__This plan of mine is oh so very lame  
__Can't you see the grass is greener where it rains? _

**Sky**

I had never traveled directly through a glamour spell before, and I knew that Hunter never had, either. Killian seemed the most comfortable among the four blood witches walking down the Irish country road. At least, sometimes it was a road. Sometimes it was a path or a field with no path at all or sometimes we found ourselves somewhere completely random. Once we had even appeared suddenly in a forest and Robbie had walked directly into a tree.

"What is this?" Bree asked as the scenery around us shifted blinkingly fast from a calm, quiet, green forest to a rolling, grassy hill with no trees to speak of.

"It's their glamour spell," Hunter said bitterly. "The Diobhail's, I mean. It's very elaborate. Their magick must be more powerful than we thought for them to have concocted this."

"Yes, it's truly amazing," I said with a sigh.

"Does that mean," Robbie said, rubbing his head where a bump had appeared from his unpleasant encounter with an oak, "that we never really made it all of those miles when we left the lodge that we thought we did?"

"Probably," I said sourly, feeling quite angry at the world. "I'm surprised we didn't realize it before. Of course …" I paused as the landscape around us suddenly transformed into a beach inlet. I looked behind me. My feet were leaving footprints in the sand. "It's very well-done. I suppose that now they're letting their illusion slip."

"Yes," Killian said sourly. "Now that they've got Morgan, why would they be concerned about us coming after her? They must think that us coming to rescue her is suicide."

Robbie gave a snort. "Yeah, well, they obviously think we're a lot more intelligent than we really are."

Bree glared at him. "I thought you said you wanted to do this."

"I do," Robbie said firmly. "I just can't shake this feeling that we're walking into something we might not come out of."

"You're not helping," I said breezily as I picked a small white flower from the patch of greenery that had appeared on the sand. It disappeared almost instantly. "For now, let's focus on breaking through these glamours and getting to Morgan."

After a long moment, Raven spoke up. "Um, this might not be the best time to ask, but … do we have a plan?"

I exchanged glances with Hunter and Killian. The three of us had been sending witch messages back and forth to each other for about twenty minutes, at first drafting ideas for a rescue and then fine-tuning the ones we had managed to come up with. Some of them had been pretty lucrative at first; hearing us trying to come up with a plan while contemplating the fact that we might all be approaching our deaths would probably have freaked the others out.

"We've, um … managed to cook something up, yes," Killian said briskly.

I looked down the beach. Mike was walking a bit in front of us, his head down, deep in thought. I looked at him curiously for a moment before picking up my pace a little bit so I was next to him.

"Hey, are you all right?"

He looked at me, surprised, but shook his head. "I'll be all right when Morgan is all right."

I smiled slightly, touched by his devotion to his sister. "You really care about her, don't you?" I asked. He nodded, and I sent barely perceptible waves of comfort and calming to him. His inner turmoil was practically tangible in the air around him.

"She's something else," he whispered. "Killian's great and all, but … there's still so much he doesn't understand."

"Like how it is to wake up one morning and find out you're not as normal as you thought you were?" I ventured. He nodded again. "It makes sense," I said thoughtfully. "Morgan knows what you've been through more than anyone ever could … and vice versa."

"I just don't want to have to face it," he said. "The possibility that I might lose her, I mean. So soon after I first found her, you know?"

"I know."

_You left  
__I died  
__You came, I think  
__But I never really know  
__I've watched you climb  
__The wrong incline  
__But what do I know? _

**Bree**

After about another hour of fighting our way through the multi-layers of glamour spells leftover from the Diobhail's chase, Hunter and Sky stopped us in the road, which had been starting to look oddly familiar.

"We're very close now," Hunter said as we all stood in a circle and looked at each other. "I can feel their presences. The cemetery must be just up the road."

"So you asked if we had a plan," Sky said, sounding a little nervous. "Well, here's what we came up with …"

_Now this applies equally to you and I  
__The only thing we share  
__Is the same sky  
__These empty metaphors  
__They're all in vain  
__Like can't you see the grass is  
__Greener where it rains?_

Killian produced three black taper candles from the pocket of his jacket. Upon closer inspection as he handed them to Robbie and I, I noticed that they were inscribed with hundreds of tiny runes and sigils, too small and fine to have been carved with a knife.

"How did you do that?" I asked, staring at the candle. "And how did you have them with you?"

"I didn't," he said honestly. "They're some little specialty glamours of my own. Except these?" He tapped the one I was holding. "Rock solid."

He glanced over at Sky and Raven, who were just out of earshot of us. "What are they doing?"

I sighed, suddenly feeling a great urge to cry. They both looked close to tears. "Probably something along the lines of, 'No matter what happens, I'll always be with you and I'll always love you.' Just … in case something goes wrong."

Robbie looked at me when Killian went over to talk to Hunter, and I held up a hand as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Don't," I whispered. "Anything you say is going to sound like goodbye. And I refuse to let it become that."

Sky, Raven, Hunter, Mike, Robbie, Killian, and I met on top of a hill just overlooking the cemetery grounds. I could barely make out the shapes of figures moving about. It was getting very dark.

"And you all remember the plan, right?" Sky asked nervously, searching all of our faces. "We can't let this go wrong. Just remember … we're here for Morgan. We get her, and we get out."

Nods all around. She looked at Robbie, Raven, and I.

"The spell that you need is on the candle, imprinted in the essence of the glamour. If you ever can't remember the chant or the rhythm, just focus on it. It'll come to you." She smiled weakly at our apprehensive looks. "Just believe in yourselves." Her smile disappeared; she looked serious. "We believe in you."

"And …" Killian said, "don't worry about the flame ever going out."

"What now?" Raven asked, confused.

Killian waved his hand over the candles the three of us held. Their wicks twitched slightly before all sparking and lighting as a flame appeared, waving slightly with the evening air.

I had to say it. "That was cool."

Killian shrugged modestly. "Just trying to be of service."

Even Hunter looked a little nervous now. "All right, Killian. Now let's see if your glamour skills are up to par."

They looked expectantly at him and he nodded slightly. "Yes." He looked at Mike. "Care to lend a helping hand?"

He nodded as Robbie, Raven, and I exchanged confused looks.

"What are you guys –"

But Killian and Mike were already walking in a circle around Hunter and Sky, who looked nervously at them, all chanting in an ancient-sounding whisper. I vaguely recognized it as a form of Gaelic, but my mind wasn't exactly focusing on that as tendrils of multi-colored magick began to encircle Hunter and Sky to the point where we couldn't see them anymore. Killian and Mike stopped walking and stood on either side of both of them, both continuing the chant, speaking louder. Robbie, Raven, and I stared, mesmerized, until the magick began to fade slightly. We could barely see Hunter and Sky, or what we thought were Hunter and Sky. When the magick disappeared fully, the three of us gasped and all took a few steps back.

"What the hell –" Robbie began.

Killian grinned proudly. "Perhaps my finest work." He looked at the two Diobhail standing beside him. "Wouldn't you say?"

Hunter and Sky looked at each other in their newly demonized forms.

"Impressive," Hunter said. His voice was deeper, raspier, much more like a Diobhail's. Almost indiscernible in difference, actually.

"Whoa …" Robbie said in awe.

That was pretty much the only thing on my mind, too. Killian had really outdone himself. Hunter and Sky looked exactly like two members of Muireadhach's clan. Their hair, of course, wasn't as dark as the few Diobhail's that we had seen had been, but that was to be expected. It had changed from fair, pale blonde to a dirty blonde/brownish color. Sky touched her hair, which was braided down her back, with a look of disgust.

"See, this is why I never dyed my hair. I always rather liked my natural color."

"Can I just ask why you did that?" Raven demanded. "Why did he put a glamour spell on you guys?"

"So we can sneak into their camp past their barrier spells," Hunter said simply.

Raven's mouth dropped open. "_What_?" she cried. "Excuse me, _what_? That was never discussed in the plan!"

"It was sort of unspoken," Sky admitted. "It's the only way, guys, really. We have to get in there somehow to get to Morgan. This way, we look just like anyone in their clan. They won't suspect us."

"If the glamour holds up!" Robbie said, sounding concerned.

"Oh, it'll hold up," Killian said seriously. "Now we really have to hurry, you lot. The three of you get to your positions around the cemetery and begin the protection spell. Mike, you and I have to get to the north end. Athar and Giomanach –"

"East end, waiting for your signal," Sky said. "Yes, we know."

"So …" Hunter gave a nervous grimace. "Is everyone ready?"

_In the garden, snake was a'charming  
__And Eve said let's give it a try  
__Now lead us not into temptation  
__But no matter how I try  
__When in the garden  
__And snake is a'charming  
__And Eve says let's give it a try  
__Eve is the apple of my eye_

"Let's do this."

_And I lie behind you  
__And cradle you in the palm of me  
__And I pat your hair down_

_

* * *

__  
I think, will we sink or swim?  
__Because we could do either or none_


	27. When Doves Cry

**Disclaimer**: I unfortunately still do not own _Sweep_. I'm working on it, though. Oh, yes. I have a plan, and it's a good plan at that! Soon the world will know my wrath! (laughs maniacally) Mwahaha! (pause) Okay, maybe not. Anyhoo, review the chapter when you're done or I'll be forced to do something very sinister—you have been warned.

Taintedpromises: I do use a lot of quotes from _BtVS_, but it's only because they're so awesome ;) Lol, my friends and I are some of the biggest _Buffy _nuts ever. Once at a sleepover we watched about 12 straight hours of it … (pause) God, that was a long night … lol, anyhoo, I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying! It's going to pick up soon, I promise.

Raynornlimegreen: Lol, your drawings are works of art :D I love things like that! And, um, yes, the cliffie in this chapter is the plan going somewhat wrong … (slaps self) Darn it! I wasn't supposed to tell you that! Now the voices in _my _head are yelling at me! Lol, just kidding, I don't really have any … but the very loud voice of the other writer of nofurylikewiccansscorned would be yelling at me if she were here ;) So I'd better not say any more!

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Wow, you must really like this story to review the same chapter twice! Lol, thank you sooo much for reviewing so much and showering me with so much praise ;) It really makes my day to read your reviews, so keep giving me more! I'll try to update as quickly as I can, but I'm just really lazy … oh, well. Here's Chapter 27!

UnangelicHalo: Thanx for all the compliments :D Keep reading and reviewing if you want me to keep writing!

**Part XXVII**: When Doves Cry

_Only daughter  
__You got your ticket too soon  
__Holy water  
__Because everybody's getting ruined  
__They are waiting to see what you do  
__Too long, waiting _

**Killian**

We had run through several different ideas for what the distraction that Mike and I would come up with should be. What we had come up with, well … it was certainly interesting. It would take more magick than I had ever used before, but I didn't doubt that I could pull it off. I thought about Morgan trapped, being held by the Diobhail, and I didn't have to think or to worry. I knew that I could manage it if the consequences of failing were losing my sister.

At the moment, Mike and I were clambering over a rocky path that would take us to the north end of the cemetery, hidden by dense trees and brush. The moon had come out, but very little light made it past the thick cover of the trees above us. I was relying on my magesight to reach the plateau of the path, and I had to help Mike back up when he stumbled on rocks several times. I could barely see anything in front of me, but squinting my eyes, I could see a patch of deep blue, almost black sky ahead. We were almost there.

"So, what are we starting with?" Mike asked, panting with exertion as we reached the plateau in the side of the hill. I crouched down behind a large, mossy boulder, peering over the top as I mentally drew concealing runes over both of us. I could barely see the cemetery below, and I squinted my eyes.

"Well, I was thinking we'd start with a forest fire," I said simply, still looking towards Ballynigel. "Then I figured we'd advance to a minor earthquake and thunderstorm. That ought to distract them."

"We can't pull that off," Mike said, aghast.

"Sure, we can," I replied confidently, glancing up towards the sky. It was starless. "As long as we keep our heads, focus on the task at hand, and find ourselves the recipients of a hell of a lot of luck, we can do anything we want." I glanced over my shoulder. "Keep following the path, Bree. There should be another flat spot up a ways for you to do your part of the spell."

She nodded and kept moving up the path, and after a moment, I heard her curse quietly under her breath.

"Are you okay?" Mike whispered, looking back at her.

"Yes," she said, sounding angry. "I just chipped a nail on a tree branch."

"And yet, somehow, life goes on," I said under my breath. "Keep climbing."

As she moved on, the night became quiet again except for the barely audible murmurs from the cemetery below us. Mike joined me in peering over the rock, and he gasped.

"Is that Morgan?"

"I think so," I whispered grimly. I could hardly see down to the cemetery, but it wasn't something that I needed to clarify visually. I could tell that Morgan was in the middle of the cemetery, sitting against a grave in the middle of a circle of tombstones. I focused on the scene before me, and it swam into clearer view. I could see chains and robes binding her to the tombstone, and she was unconscious. A small stream of blood was trickling down the side of her face from a cut on her forehead. Dark, shadowy figures were moving about her so that I could only catch a glimpse of her for a second or two at a time. It looked as if they were preparing for a ritual of some kind. Some of them were carrying smudges of herbs or wands or athames or other ritual tools.

"What are they doing?" Mike whispered, sounding fearful.

"I don't know."

_Sky_, I whispered in my mind. _Sky, they've got her in the middle of the circle of tombstones. Where are you and Hunter? _

I got a reply almost instantly. _We're at the east end, maybe a hundred feet or so away from the nearest mausoleum. We can see Morgan from here. _She sounded worried. _She doesn't look well at all. _

Hunter butted in rudely, sounding quite agitated. _Can the lot of you focus and get on with the glamour spell already? Let's get this over with as soon as we can! We have to get her out before they start their ritual and they're completely focused on her. _

I sighed and nodded. _All right. We're starting. Wait for our signal. _

They didn't respond, but I knew that their gazes must be aimed up here at us, waiting for us to begin. I looked at Mike, who was watching me nervously.

"Ready?" I asked.

"No," he said honestly.

"Let's begin."

"Okay."

It was the most complicated spell I had ever attempted in my entire life. As I began my power call and felt rather than heard Mike doing the same thing, I focused on raising power so fully and completely I almost completely lost focus on what was around me. I couldn't feel the ground that I was kneeling on or the cold night air stinging my skin. I was visualizing the trees around me, and I saw the bark burning and peeling as fire ate it away, consuming the leaves and creating a massive pillar of fire. I saw it spreading to other trees in a blazing inferno, and I was beginning to hear snapping and popping sounds from behind me. I focused more deeply on the glamour, drawing runes and sigils in the air to strengthen the magick that I already felt flowing from Mike and me.

"Look," Mike said in amazement. I opened my eyes and turned around to look at the trees behind us. Flames were slowly creeping up the trunk of a massive evergreen and were beginning to reach out to the branches, catching the needles on fire.

"Nice," Mike grinned appreciatively.

"Keep working it," I said determinedly, still reeling from the powerful magick I felt in the air around us. "I'm going to head down closer to the cemetery to start the earthquake." I paused. "That is such a strange sentence. But I'll be back soon."

He nodded, and I felt him slip back into a deep concentration. I looked once more at the fire in the woods; the flames had spread to a few trees around the first, and smoke was beginning to rise in the air. I smiled to myself. It was a powerful glamour, I could feel its strength; hopefully they wouldn't be able to see through it until it was too late for them to do anything about it.

_Everybody's cleared the room  
__And they'll dress you up  
__Stand you in all the right places  
__Words like honey  
__Smile as they change your faces  
__With no regard to you at all  
__And you find they treat you like a paper doll_

I met Hunter and Sky—or at least the two demons I sincerely hoped were Hunter and Sky—on the east side of the cemetery on my way back down the side of the forest rise. I chanced a glance back up the mountain; Mike still had the glamour going strong, and it was gaining momentum with every passing second. I felt a swell of pride within me; I couldn't have asked for a more powerful or remarkable brother.

"Killian, it looks wonderful!" Sky said, her face alight with excitement. "I think this can work, I really do."

"Well, it had better," I said, passing them and continuing through the shadows. "I have to put up the next bit, but it's not time yet. This may have distracted them, but we need to get more of them out of there."

"Wait, if they go up there to investigate and Bree and Mike are there –" Hunter began. I held up a hand.

"Mike knows what to do when he sees them coming, and so does Bree. Don't worry. They're perfectly safe."

"I hope for your sake that you're right," he muttered under his breath, turning to peer back at the cemetery. True enough, several of the Diobhail had broken away from the main cemetery, where what looked like most of the clan had been milling around in anticipation for whatever was coming. The ceremony to strip Morgan of her powers, no doubt.

"Just watch for me," I called over my shoulder as I disappeared out of their sight into the underbrush.

_And they'll dress you up for the flight  
__Like Ophelia, you wave goodnight  
__With the earth and sky you cheer and cry  
__Writhe as all your days go by  
__And laugh as you die_

**Bree**

"Are you guys ready?" I whispered, shivering slightly as a gust of chilling air flew past me. Even though half the forest was on fire, it was still really cold that night.

I heard Robbie and Raven's responses as clearly as if they were standing next to me. I just shook my head at how clever this magick really was and began the chant.

"Three times around, three times about, evil is bound and evil stays out …"

_Sweet softer shoulder  
__Oh, sweet sugar safe_

**Alexis **

I didn't answer as an orderly asked if I was through with my cranberry pudding or if I'd be having more; my eyes were closed, but it didn't mean I wasn't seeing anything. It was as if a television screen had appeared on my closed eyelids, and I was watching the scene before me in perfect high-definition color and sound. And emotion. I had been watching my friends for the past few hours, able to see them so clearly but unable to speak to them or talk to them … or warn them.

I felt Mike focusing so hard on the glamour and raising to its fullest that he had very nearly lost perception of the world around him. His eyes closed, he was in so deep a trance that I was terrified.

"Mike!" I wanted to yell. "Mike, they're coming! Can't you tell they're coming? You're supposed to be protecting you and Bree!"

Oh, no … he hadn't seen them coming. A few of Muireadhach's soldiers were running up the hillside towards where he was hidden behind a rock, a hiding place that wouldn't last long at all. Already they had seen him, and he was too deep in a trance of building the glamour to see them.

I saw Killian give Hunter and Sky the signal they were searching for: a fake explosion in the wooded trees near Mike that echoed across the cemetery like a bomb's roar. I saw them leaving the safety of their hiding spot behind the mausoleum and enter the main cemetery; no one was looking at them. They were just more members of the clan.

I wanted to cry out, "No!" but I was too late. Four strong, scaly arms had grabbed both of Mike's and hauled him to his feet, rudely awakening him from his trance with a shot of horror and panic that I felt shudder through me. They had found him, and … oh, Goddess, no … the glamour in the trees was fading, the flames dying as they curled away into the mere wisps of magick encircling the forests that they truly were.

I felt Killian's panic, and that split loss of concentration was all it took. He had been moments away from creating a full-blown earthquake in the cemetery to rattle the Diobhail enough to distract them, but it was just a miniscule rumbling that I felt. Now I was looking through Sky's eyes as she tried to break through the locking and binding spells on the chains holding the unconscious Morgan to the gravestone; there were so many layers on them, but she was close, fitting them together and unlocking them like a puzzle.

Suddenly, though, she wasn't looking at the brown cloth robe she had been wearing under her glamour; her hands weren't brown, wrinkled, and scaly like a Diobhail's anymore. She looked up, and I saw Hunter looking back at me. Hunter. Not a Diobhail. His green eyes were wide with fear, and I felt a surge of panic race through me unlike any I had ever felt before.

"Interesting …"

The terror was almost overpowering. As I looked into those bloodshot, cold eyes, my mind ceased to process all thoughts.

"It was an interesting idea, really. Quite a nice glamour, as well, if I may share my opinion." A sigh. "Of course, it's a shame it was for nothing. Allow me to show you out."

I watched in absolute horror as Muireadhach, with a burst of magick so powerful it terrified me, sent Hunter and Sky airborne and flung them out of the circle without further ado. A yell died in my throat but surfaced again; I screamed for real as I saw them, with a deafening crack, reach the outer limits of the cemetery and crash, Sky into the wall and Hunter against her, into the wall of the outermost mausoleum.

I was screaming and yelling and not even attempting to calm myself; I saw their bodies crumple on the ground, lifeless, and I almost choked as a sob that welled in my throat never quite made it out.

"No!" I screamed. "No!"

Doctors and nurses were rushing into my room, but there was nothing they could do to subdue me. I wasn't paying attention to them. I just saw Hunter and Sky, on the ground, unmoving. I could see blood beginning to pool on the ground, staining the grass as they lay there. Unmoving.

"No …" I sobbed, feeling real tears spilling out of my eyes. "No … no, get up, hurry … please get up …"

I was seeing someone else through my tears: Raven, Sky's girlfriend. She stopped chanting the spell that she, Bree, and Robbie were doing almost instantly as the next words faded from her mind. She knew instantly that something was wrong.

"Sky …" I felt her whisper as she realized that she wasn't sensing anything from her lover. Moments ago, she had felt fear, and before that intense concentration. Now it was just nothing.

I collapsed in my bed, wailing, sobbing for all I was worth. Goddess, no, this couldn't be happening … this couldn't be happening …

_Everybody's got their own life philosophy  
__And I can't wait until I find one coming from me  
__Oh, the bridge is narrow  
__You better not look down  
__Because as soon as you jump over  
__You won't find anybody around_

**Killian**

I realized too late what was going on. Mike had been captured by Muireadhach's soldiers, and the glamour spell had faded away. All of the glamour spells, actually. As I was running towards the mausoleum where I had seen Hunter and Sky fall a moment before, my mind was racing, my heart beating too fast for comfort. Everything was coming apart … the demons had Morgan and now Mike, too … and Hunter and Sky …

"What happened?" I demanded as I ran up to the scene that took my breath away. Hunter and Sky were both unconscious (or worse, said an eerie voice inside my head) on the ground. I saw Bree and Robbie running up from the other side, both with horrorstruck expressions.

"Muireadhach happened," Bree said in one breath, falling to her knees beside Hunter and checking for a pulse. "Oh, God, Hunter, Sky …" She looked up. "He's alive. His pulse is weak, though. Really weak."

"Goddess …" I whispered. I knelt down next to Sky, but still I stood back a little. Raven was crying, holding Sky's limp body tightly as sobs wracked her body. I could only imagine the pain and terror she was feeling right then. "Don't move her, Raven," I cautioned. "You could make the damage worse." I reached for her, but Raven glared at me.

"Get away from her," she said through gritted teeth.

"Raven –" I started.

"I said, get away from her!" she yelled, desperation and panic in her shaky voice. I looked at Bree and Robbie desperately.

"They need to get to a hospital. It looks like Sky's got some heavy damage."

Robbie and Bree both instantly looked at Sky, and Bree choked back a sob. A steady stream of blood was trickling out of Sky's ear, a sure sign of brain damage. Robbie's eyes widened.

"Oh, God …"

"I'll take them," I said.

"But you're a blood witch," Bree objected. "You have to –"

"I can get them to safety faster. The three of you need to continue the protection spell."

Bree snorted angrily. "Oh, yeah, a fat lot of good that did."

"It was working," I said firmly. "I could feel it. You need to keep doing it now for Morgan and Mike."

Robbie's eyes widened. "Wait, they've got Mike?"

I bit my lip. "Yes, and that's why you need to keep doing it. To make sure nothing happens to them. Everything could come undone otherwise." I bit my lip. "Mike's our only hope now." I looked at Raven, desperate to make her understand. "Raven, I swear to the Goddess that I'll make sure she's all right. You have to let me take them to a hospital."

Raven glared at me for a moment, her eyes red and her cheeks stained with tears, before nodding slightly. "Hurry," was all she said.

_Oh, the bridge is narrow  
__And you've got so far to fall  
__And you know down in dirty water  
__Is no place for a paper doll_

I looked back at the cemetery, feeling a despair rising in me that was almost crippling. Mike and Morgan were both captured, and Bree, Robbie, and Raven had returned—albeit unwillingly—to doing the protection spell. I bit my lip; I honestly hadn't had the heart to tell them that I honestly didn't know what good it would do. Because I had allowed myself to be distracted, we had failed. Hunter and Sky's lives were hanging in the deadly balance and, with a feeling of panic, I realized just how faint Sky's heartbeat was. Hunter was bleeding from a large gouge on his back, the blood soaking through his shirt onto the ground, and I couldn't hear Sky breathing anymore.

What else could be done?


	28. Just Pretend Happy Ending

**Disclaimer**: Gaahh, I am so lazy … guys, I'm really sorry for delaying posting this chapter for so long … or for just waiting so long to write it. (embarrassed silence) Um, forgive me? Feel free to yell at me as long as you want in a review! That or you can praise me because, while I waited a long time, I could have waited longer! Or not posted at all! Don't you hate it when you're reading a really good story and then the person just never updates it ever again? Grr! I hate that! But I promise that I'll keep updating until I finish the story … even if it takes me forever, I _will_ finish it! Plus, I have an idea for a story after this one, but I told myself that I wouldn't write it until this one was finished so I could focus on it w/o having to worry about this one. Anyway, read and review when you finish the chapter! Reviews make me happy and, the happier I am, the more likely I am to update quickly and efficiently :D And, um, the song belongs to Phantom Planet.

Taintedpromises: I'm not from Texas! I'm forced to live here against my will! I really hate it here—at least compared to Washington D.C., where I used to live … it was so much better there. People say "y'all" too much here … it annoys the heck out of me! Grr! You are sooo lucky you live in Scotland. I would love to live in Europe (I get to visit Europe this summer, though! Yay!) but … alas … I'm stuck here in the US … with … TEXAS CONSERVATIVES! (runs and hides) I severely dislike conservatives and their president … but anyway, I've taken up enough time ranting about my hate of Texas. Read the chapter now :P

Raynornlimegreen: Yes, it's true that I'm evil, vile, despicable, malevolent, wicked, sinful, abominable, malicious, loathsome, immoral, foul, nasty, horrid, revolting, disgusting, obnoxious, foul, and cruel :D Lol, did you have to use a thesaurus to come up with all of those words? I definitely wouldn't be able to think of that many synonyms for "bad". But, yes, I am all of those! Mwahaha!

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Ooh … (amazed) 3 reviews on one chapter! That makes me feel all fuzzy inside :D Lol, thank you sooo much for reviewing and always commenting on the different aspects of all of the chapters! It doesn't really do me any good when people are like, "It's good. Update soon." Of course … I do that, too … so I shouldn't really be complaining, but still! It's great to get reviews from people like you, so give me more … please? (puppy dog eyes) Pleeeease?

UnangelicHalo: Hehe, only a select few know which one of the possibilities I will choose to off at the end … um … wait, who said anything about someone being killed off? (pause) If anyone asks, _you heard nothing! _

**Part XXVIII**: Just Pretend Happy Ending

_There's nothing for me here  
__I'm starting to get old  
__Time just ticks on  
__We've all been taking some comfort in repetition  
__And I'm left with no way to scratch  
__What has been itching_

**Morgan**

As I hovered between the realms of consciousness and the fuzzy darkness on the edges of my mind, my sense of touch was all that I could rely on. My hands were cold, and my head was pounding with a killer headache. There was a sharp pain on my forehead, too; Bhanaltra must have cut me. I tried to open my eyes, but I didn't feel even the slightest flicker of movement in my physical body. Muireadhach had me under a powerful binding spell; I didn't have to be a genius to figure out that it would be almost impossible to break it by myself.

I was straining to hear, but I felt so far away from my body. I could barely pick up on any sounds coming from around me. I heard whispers, so far and so faint. People must be talking around me, maybe even shouting, but I couldn't hear anything. It was so quiet; I wanted to scream just to hear a sound. The silence was deafening.

I was sure that, if I was awake, I would have been crying. Something inside me was hurting, and being so disconnected from the world around me made it easier to feel. Something was dying, something intangible, and I wanted to gasp and choke with the pain of it. Something was wrong, I could tell. I instantly knew that it was Hunter; something had to be wrong with him. Why else would I suddenly be feeling this internal ache, so emotionally and mentally sharp that I could almost feel a physical pain from it?

I knew it with a certainty that was frightening; Hunter and Sky's lives were in danger, slipping farther away from the real world with every passing second. I had to wake up; I had to find them and save them. Where were they? Where are you, Hunter?

Then I felt a burst of anger within me so sudden, so strong, that I could almost feel myself shaking; what were my friends doing here? I told them to stay away. I told them to stay away so they'd be safe. Why hadn't they listened to me?

I could almost hear Hunter's voice, as clear as if he were sitting next to me. _Because we love you, Morgan. You didn't think we'd just let you do this, did you? _

I wanted to cry in that moment. I could feel the tears welling up from somewhere inside the emotions that I had never connected with before.

I felt him whispering something else. _Now you have to wake up. You have a job to do. People you need to protect._

_I don't understand_, I tried to say. _Where are you? Why couldn't you have just let me do this_?

There was no response. The voices around me were growing louder, and I felt something fly past me, the heat from it almost burning my arm.

The next thought I registered didn't come from Hunter; it was my own, but it was if it was another voice within me telling me something: It's time for you to see this through.

_And I'm ready and waiting  
__For the happy ending_

**Mike**

The chains binding me to the gravestone were rough, chafing my skin every time I shifted. As I looked into eyes that held no light, eyes that truly terrified me with their sheer, forbidding gaze, I could see Morgan out of the corner of my eye, tied to a headstone in the middle of the circle as the tall, lithe members of Muireadhach's clan hung back, looking to their leader as if awaiting further instructions. Morgan looked battered, and I could see bruises forming on her arms. I saw Muireadhach's gaze shift to the direction that I was looking, and he gave a grisly smile.

"Sad, isn't it? The Woodbane princess reduced to this? This shell of a human being?" He sounded a little disappointed. "This will not make much of a battle tale when we leave your realm. I had really expected more of a fight from her."

I didn't say anything, but I clenched my fists tightly to keep from trying to break free again. I wanted to yell at the demon in front of me; didn't he understand that he was about to kill an innocent girl who had never hurt anyone in her life? Didn't he understand that he was about to kill my sister?

"But your friends, though …" He turned to look back at me, and I shuddered as his eyes refocused, boring into mine. "Your friends put up quite a fight. They were fools for thinking they could stop us."

"You had better let her go," I whispered through gritted teeth. "If you let us have her back, maybe most of you will get out of this alive."

Muireadhach laughed; it sounded like a mix between a barking dog and nails on a chalkboard. I wanted to cover my ears as the horrible sound penetrated my head.

"I honestly do not believe you are in a position to be threatening me, boy," he said, still chuckling in a demented sort of way to himself. "If you want the girl, you will have to kill us all. We will not risk letting this girl live."

"We wouldn't let her give in," I said desperately. "We would never let her give in to dark magick. She can change; she can persevere over –"

Muireadhach sounded bored. "That will never happen. The future has been foreseen, and quite clearly at that. The only thing that could change her fate would be monumental, something greater than any of us could ever create. It would have to alter the very essence of who this girl … this Morgan Riordan … is." A pause. Did I detect a note of bitterness in his deep, rough voice? "Such a thing does not exist."

He had turned away; his energies were focused elsewhere. I felt him retreat into his own mind, pondering what he had just said as he said something to one of his soldiers in an ancient, archaic tongue. I looked at Morgan again, straining slightly to loosen the grip that the chains had on me, and suddenly I felt myself growing angry. Morgan had dark magick in her blood, yes; our father, Ciaran MacEwan, was one of the cruelest, most notorious magick abusers to ever curse the world with his presence. But Morgan's mother? Killian had told me about her. She had been beautiful, a white witch, powerful beyond her years. She had known the difference between dark and light in a person, something Morgan would probably struggle her whole life to understand. She had never abused magick, never once done anything to deserve the harsh cultural stereotype of being 'evil' except be born into a Woodbane clan.

It wasn't even something that Maeve could control, just as Morgan couldn't control the fate of the man that her father had turned out to be. At least she had white magick in her blood; she was also the child of a woman who had known what dark magick was and had rejected it. She had a choice; she didn't have to relinquish the good in her lineage, regardless of what Muireadhach and his clan believed. I bit my lip slightly. If anyone should be chained to that grave in the middle of an Irish cemetery, it should have been me. I couldn't claim the same lineage as Morgan could; my mother hadn't even been a witch. The only magick in me was from the MacEwan line; the only place that my power flowed from was from hundreds of years of dark magick practice.

Without even being aware of it, I realized that that power was swelling right then. I could feel my hands starting to shake as magick coursed through my veins, ready to attack Muireadhach. I wouldn't let him do this to my sister, the one person with an opportunity to show the world that to be a MacEwan wasn't to be evil.

I closed my eyes and saw the chains binding me to the gravestone; I visualized them snapping, breaking and shattering, setting me free. The spells on them weren't difficult to break through. I saw the metal bending and reshaping itself, and I heard something snap behind me, so quietly that I was almost certain the Diobhail hadn't heard it.

Muireadhach turned to look back at me from the ranks of his soldiers. I thought I saw a half-smile cross his disfigured mouth. He had felt the rise of power as well.

"Don't do anything stupid, boy."

I wasn't about to let him tell me what to do. "No, demon!" I didn't even realize that I was on my feet. "I'll do what I wish. You will _not _kill Morgan."

_Now the days go by  
__They pass right through us  
__Our night lives make us so useless  
__Now don't take anything to heart  
__We don't care  
__We don't want to start _

I felt magick pouring out of me as I raised my hand and launched a sphere of energy towards the clan leader, never—strangely enough, given the situation—having felt so exhilarated in my life. Suddenly everything was moving a little faster. Even with supernatural reflexes, Muireadhach barely managed to avoid my attack; off-balance and startled, he barked a harsh order to his soldiers. My heart was thumping, but suddenly I wasn't afraid anymore. The Diobhail were approaching me, slowly at first before it became a mad dash.

I raised my arms again and I saw the dozens upon dozens of foster parents I had had over the course of my life, the multitudes of step-brothers and step-sisters that I had never connected with, the father who had abandoned my mother when he found out she was pregnant, the mother who had put me up for adoption because she couldn't stand me ruining her lifestyle, the real brother that I never knew I had but treated me like he had known me his whole life, and the sister I had come to love in the short time I knew her. Out of all of that pain, that misery, those years of heartache and sorrow and longing to find a place that I actually fit in, I found the energy that I needed to save my life and Morgan's.

I launched dozens of those enigmatic bundles of energy towards the oncoming crowd of soldiers, but I felt despair beginning to rise within me. When one soldier fell, two took his place. I stared down at myself; I was physically radiating the energy that I felt bursting through me. I looked at Morgan, a dull roar in my ears, and dark energy smashed into the looming wave. This was magick they had never seen before, and I could feel Muireadhach's astonishment as he watched his army crumbling before his eyes. I was more powerful than he had thought.

One word, though, was all it took for me to suddenly slam back to reality.

"Mike?"

Morgan was awake. She was staring at me, her eyes wide with shock and an unreadable emotion. Was it anger? She seemed to be searching for words that wouldn't come to her.

_Well, I'm leaving for a while  
__I'll head in some direction  
__I just don't know which one I should be taking  
__And I'm ready and waiting  
__For the happy ending_

**Morgan**

I was furious. Imagine, if you will, the utter surprise of opening my eyes with my last memory being blacked out by a demonic nursemaid and seeing my younger brother Mike, quite literally radiating black energy, firing balls of energy at a group of Muireadhach's soldiers. Before I had time to even begin to comprehend what was happening in front of me, I couldn't see Muireadhach and the others as clearly. There was something between them and us, and I realized a moment later that Mike had pulled out his athame—our father's beautifully carved, radiant-in-the-light-of-the-energy athame—and put up a temporary rune shield, albeit I could tell it was stronger and more powerful than the ones we had been practicing so long ago. Strangely enough, the one thought that crossed my mind was, "Well, at least I taught him something."

I stared at him, and thought I'd open with an outraged, "What the hell are you doing here?"

He looked back at me in confusion, panting for breath with exertion; to allow such potent magicks to run through him must have been so draining. "I'm trying to save your life!"

"What the hell are you doing here?" I repeated, my mind stuck on the same track. My voice sounded high and desperate, and my heart was racing. Goddess, this couldn't be happening. "What are you doing here, Mike? It's too dangerous for you to be here! How did you even know where to find me?"

"Morgan, we'll explain later," he said quickly, and he ducked behind the gravestone; I could tell that he was trying to undue the binding spells that Muireadhach had placed on the chains tying me to my grandmother's grave. "We have to get you out of here _now_, and I can't say how long the shield will hold up."

I chanced a glance towards Muireadhach. He looked strangely disfigured through the translucent shield, even more so than usual. I could see his soldiers pounding on the edges, but they couldn't break through. Mike's magick was too powerful for them.

"Mike …" I tried to say, my throat constricting. "Mike, you have to get out of here."

"I'm not leaving you," he said firmly from behind me.

"I told you to get out of here!" I yelled, unleashing the desperation and fear building up in my chest. I needed to make him understand; why wasn't he listening to me? "This isn't your battle, Mike! This doesn't have anything to do with you! _Would you stop trying to break the spells on the chains and listen to me_?"

He held up the lock to the chains. "Too late."

I screamed with fury and stood up, my legs shaking as I shrugged the chains off me. They fell limply to the grassy ground with a clatter. Mike was staring at me.

"Morgan, please, we have to go –"

"No, _you _have to go," I cried. "I'm not going to let you stay here. It's too dangerous. This isn't your fight, Mike! It's mine!"

"If you think I'm just going to leave my sister here so that these demons can kill her –"

"You don't have a choice!" I yelled as tears began to leak out of my eyes. "Mike, I'm doing this for all of you! You and Killian and the rest of my friends! Why can't you just accept it? This is what has to happen! I'm going to be evil in the future! Muireadhach showed me what his soothsayers foresaw! I have to do this to protect all of you!"

"Why do you have a death wish, Morgan?" he demanded. "Why can't you come with us? We'll find another way! You won't give in to evil, Morgan, I know you well enough to say that! You could never hurt anyone like that!"

"You're wrong," I whispered. "I could be that person so easily. It's in me, Mike. It's in both of us, but I'm the one that it blossoms in. You can't help it, and you can't prevent it. This is what has to be done. Do you think I really want to die? Of course I don't! But I don't have a choice! It's me or all of you, and the decision is fairly obvious!"

_I'm begging and pleading  
__For another beating_

Mike looked about to say something, but I held up a hand and cut him off. "Mike …" I was suddenly finding it rather hard to not start crying. "Mike … I'd rather lose my magick and go insane or even …" I bit back a sob. "God, I'd even rather die than know that I had caused all of you so much pain. My friends, my soulmate … they're all going to die because of me." I felt sick. "I can't stand that. The thought of it makes me want to vomit." I took a deep breath and looked my brother in the eyes. "I can't let this happen to them, Mike. I can't let it happen to anyone."

"Morgan …" He looked sympathetic, and he took a step forward. "It's not going to happen. Okay? You have this warning." I must have looked confused; he elaborated. "The Diobhail gave you this warning, didn't they? You saw a possible future, not a definite one!" I was staring at him, and he continued, looking at me intensely. "Don't you think that knowing what might possibly be will affect what you do in the future?"

I couldn't seem to wrap my mind around that concept. "But our dad … he –"

"Morgan, don't make this about our dad," he said, for once sounding a little bit annoyed. "Yes, Ciaran is evil. You and I both know that. But, Morgan …" He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. "We're his children. We're not his clones." He looked at me, watching the effect his words had on me. "We make our own choices."

I couldn't help but smile ruefully at that. "I know."

"So you see?" he said desperately. "You don't have to do this. I know you, Morgan. _I know you_. You love your friends more than anything. Do you honestly think that, knowing what you know now, you would choose to hurt them in the future? Because, Morgan, you're bigger than that! You don't have to stoop to the levels of people like our dad!"

In spite of everything … in spite of everything that I had seen through Muireadhach's eyes … the idea of becoming Ciaran MacEwan–embodying his principles and his convictions of evil–truly frightened me. My eyes shone with tears. "Mike …"

"You can be the most amazing witch in the world," he began, "but you have to –"

He stopped talking abruptly. I looked at him curiously, wanting to know what he had been about to say. When I lowered my gaze from his face, though, my breath caught in my throat. Blood was slowly dripping on the ground, but it didn't even connect in my mind that it was from the wound in Mike's chest. He looked just as confused as I was, and when he saw the athame blade—that familiar blade that was all he had left of our father's lineage—stuck clear through his skin, the tip trickling blood to the ground, his eyes widened a little.

I wasn't hearing anything. I was staring, transfixed, at the athame, at my brother, and at Muireadhach's figure behind him. The shield had been broken.

As he collapsed in front of me in what seemed like slow motion, my mind didn't make the jump between Mike, the knife, and Muireadhach for a long moment. However, the gap that seemed to be forming itself in my heart spoke for itself.

"Oh, Goddess …"

_I'm ready and waiting  
__For the happy ending_


	29. Castles Falling

**Disclaimer**: Good God, how long have I been on my computer this weekend? Far too long, that's for certain. Yup … I'm addicted. I admit it. I should probably look into getting some help for that … but then they'd lock me up in some computer rehab place where there aren't any computers! And then I couldn't update any of my stories or read any fanfiction or play any games! Aah! (runs off screaming) Okay, I'm better now, but seriously … I am addicted to my computer. There's my rant. I don't own anything. And, um, in case the opening seems a little weird, just remember that Morgan's in shock. How would you react if you saw your brother murdered in front of you (provided that you have a brother, that is)? But, really … this story is almost done :gasp: I don't know how many chapters are left exactly, but we're definitely in the home stretch … Hang in there!

Raynornlimegreen: Puppy dog eyes! Lol, I love doing those :D They seem to annoy people for some mysterious reason. Hmm … Anyhoo, if I ever publish a book—doubtful—I'll let you know! You'll probably see me on CNN or something ("Please buy my book so I get a lot of money so I can buy more Sweep books!") :P

Taintedpromises: You know what song I'm listening to right now? "Transylvanian Concubine" by Rasputina … it's the song that plays during Drusilla's party in "Surprise." Why am I listening to this, I ask you? It's a weird song. Anyhoo, I have no idea why I just told you that. Thanks for your constant reviews! Keep 'em coming!

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Your reviews are so long! Lol, I could never write that much in a review, so I really appreciate it! I'm trying to take less time in updating, but I've had more homework than usual lately :sigh: I'm working, I promise! This story is almost done, but I have plans for another one when this one is done, so never fear! I won't abandon _Sweep_! I could never abandon it even if I wanted to … it's like an addiction ;)

**Part XXIX**: Castles Falling

_Of all the things I believed in  
I just want to get it over with  
Tears from behind my eyes  
But I do not cry  
Counting the days that past me by_

_I've been searching deep down in my soul  
Words that I'm hearing are starting to get old  
Looks like I'm starting all over again  
The last three years were just pretend and I said_

**Morgan**

It seemed like time really had stopped moving. For what felt like an eternity, the only things in the world were Mike, Muireadhach, and I. Mike's body on the ground wasn't moving, and the deep wound from his athame was spilling deep red blood onto the ground, soaking the grass, which was already damp with dew. I couldn't take my eyes off the knife; what was it doing there? It wasn't supposed to be there. Mike wasn't … _dead_, was he?

I dismissed that possibility. It was nonsense. He couldn't be dead. He had been standing there talking to me just seconds ago. He was just surprised that he had a mortal wound in his back. He'd be fine after we could get him to a hospital.

"It'll be okay, Mike," I whispered, patting his arm gently. His skin felt warm. See? In all the books I've ever read, dead people's skin feels cold. "I'll get you to a hospital and they'll patch that right up. Do you want me to message Hunter? I'm sure he has his cell phone with him. He could get the EMS out here really fast … if they have an Irish EMS, I suppose."

He didn't answer me.

I looked at him strangely. His eyes were closed, and I couldn't see any signs of circulation. This was worse than I thought. "Mike? I asked if you want me to message Hunter! Do you?"

Still no response.

I felt cold. "Mike," I said firmly, punching his shoulder lightly. He still didn't move. "Mike … M-Mike, get up. It's not that deep a wound. Get up!"

Was I still seeing him in front of me? He could have been standing up, saying, "Don't worry, Morgan, I'm fine." Why was he still lying on the ground? Couldn't he tell that this wasn't funny anymore?

_Goodbye to you  
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew  
You were the one I loved  
The one thing that I tried to hold on to_

"Mike!" I cried angrily. I stopped, surprised. Why were there tears on my cheeks? "Mike, get up! What are you doing? Come on! We have to get out of here!" It was getting harder to breathe. My throat felt constricted; a huge lump was forming in it, and my eyes stung with tears. "Mike! Why aren't you listening to me?" Muireadhach was watching me while his soldiers still beat at the protective shield around us. There was something in his eyes, something human … sympathy?

It made me angrier. I didn't need sympathy. Mike was fine. He was just being melodramatic about something or other. "Mike … Mike, come on …" My voice grew weaker, and it was a struggle to keep shaking him gently. "M-Mike …" I was whispering, murmuring, not even speaking anymore. Something inside me felt like it was breaking.

"You still don't understand, do you?" Muireadhach whispered. "You think you're ever going to be a real witch? You think you can stop yourself from giving in to your dark side? With those emotions running rampant through you? You can't be." I wasn't listening to him. "Your feelings make you feeble. Your powers are great … devastating … but it's what you fear most. You fear that, beneath it all, you're just a pitiful human on the inside."

I only heard one sentence from what he was telling me. "You're weak."

Suddenly everything that had been building inside of me for the past few weeks burst over. It was going to England and meeting Shelagh and Beck and trying to stop Cràdh Fisher and making it to Ireland and my dreams and helping Alexis and being chased by the Diobhail over the countryside and escaping and meeting the brother that I never knew I had and it was all too much. It spilled out, and as I looked at Muireadhach for the first time since the initial shock at seeing him invade our shield, I saw fear in his eyes.

"I am not weak."

It was the most exhilarating, horrifying, incredible, and shocking feeling I had ever experienced in my entire life. Magick was exploding out of me, exploding out of the rage and frustration and pain and sorrow that had been building up for years. I felt it coursing out of me like a tidal wave, and I fueled it with more anger; Muireadhach had killed my brother. The realization had hit me a moment before. Muireadhach had killed my brother and he was standing there talking to me like nothing had happened. I saw a future that would have been amazing, years of getting to know each other and reminiscing about that first night that we met, snuffed out in a second. Muireadhach had destroyed that chance in a second. He had to pay.

I saw fires erupting all around me. Muireadhach's soldiers were screaming as the magick gushing from me engulfed them and destroyed them; it incinerated them from the inside out. Magick flew from me, from my rage, and I let it do just what I wanted it to do. Kill the monsters who had killed my brother.

_I still get lost in your eyes  
And it seems like I can't live a day without you  
Closing my eyes  
__Until you chase my thoughts away  
To a place where I am blinded by the light  
__But it's not right_

"Come on, Dad," I whispered in my head, pulling for that connection that I had felt with Ciaran's bloodline from the first moment I met him. "We're Woodbanes. We're not weak."

The power came from my blood, and I welcomed it, pushing it out of me so it could connect and bring the demons' punishment. They couldn't live after what they did to me. I wouldn't let them.

As the rush faded, suddenly everything seemed more aware. I couldn't think straight. My mind felt tired, faded, and I couldn't hold onto a thought. They were whizzing through my head. Mike dead. Muireadhach. Diobhail. Hunter and Sky. Killian. I gasped with the sudden wrench in my stomach. Oh, Goddess. This was all too much. It was just too much. I couldn't … I was gasping for breath, something in me was surely dying … was it possible for one person to hurt this much so quickly?

I looked over the cemetery. It was deserted. The grass was charred and burnt, dead on the ground like flames had just destroyed it. The Diobhail were gone, and I knew what had happened to them. They were gone. Killed … forever. Just like …

I looked at the demon in front of me, and it struck me that, of course. Muireadhach was still alive. Why wouldn't he be? He had proven over and over that he was so much stronger than the other members of his clan. Of course he had survived the blast. Barely, though. He didn't look too well. He had been thrown of his feet, was gasping for air. There were wounds crisscrossing his face, small cuts and bruises forming. I looked between him and Mike's body, which hadn't moved. The blast hadn't touched him. I was panting with exertion, my body buzzing, and I could feel fury swelling in me even as I looked at my brother's killer.

Muireadhach was looking at me, and there was loathing in his eyes. But it wasn't directed towards me. It was towards himself.

"See now what we were trying to prevent?"

_Goodbye to you  
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew  
You were the one I loved  
The one thing that I tried to hold on to_

I saw red, and I was attacking him with fists, magick, anything that I could summon. I was attacking him, and he wasn't fighting back. He couldn't. I could see myself in his eyes. The blood pumping through my veins was rich with dark magick; my father's lineage was showing itself at last. It was flowing through me, and I wasn't making an effort to stop it. I could see myself when I stared at him, and I couldn't take it anymore.

"You think you've won, but you haven't! You haven't won! You lost! I beat you! I beat your whole freaking army –" –only I didn't say 'freaking' – "and you think you've won? I beat you because I'm better than you! You're just a demon! You didn't win, you demon! I beat you!"

Tears were pouring down my face, and I made no attempt to stop them. It hurt too much to think right now.

"You haven't won," I yelled, choking on a sob that threatened to erupt in my throat. I could feel the life slowly slipping out of the body in front of me. As I pounded the flesh, screamed and kicked, I knew that it wouldn't help. Mike's body would still be there when Muireadhach was dead; killing him wouldn't bring back my brother. Somehow, though, I couldn't be bothered to stop.

"Leave me alone!" I sobbed. "Just leave me alone and stop …"

The ground shook suddenly and violently, and I was jolted off-balance and landed in a heap a few feet away from Muireadhach. I could see cracks appearing in the ground, like thin ice splitting when someone walked upon it. The hills and trees themselves were shaking and rumbling, and I gasped, understanding what was happening. I had heard Muireadhach talking to one of his soldiers before he had handed me over to Bhanaltra. The plan had never been to strip me of my powers; it was to send me to Muireadhach's realm itself. I was fairly certain that the reception would have involved eternal torture of some kind. Now, I was seeing the way into Muireadhach's world. It was opening in front of my very eyes.

"No!" I screamed, making a mad lunge forward towards Muireadhach and grabbing for him. But I was too late. His body had already disappeared into the gaping chasm that appeared in the earth before me. It was spreading, earth and dirt falling away into a deep hole that I couldn't see the bottom of. I fought to get back to my feet and ran, stumbling, back to Mike's body as the chasm threatened to swallow the whole cemetery. I had just reached him when the shaking, the rumbling, suddenly stopped. I looked around me wildly. The abyss was gone.

In that moment something inside me broke. The tears were falling free, and I couldn't stop them. I took Mike's cold hand in my own and collapsed next to him in a heap, sobbing uncontrollably. For a brief instant, a thought crossed my mind. Maybe this was just a dream. Maybe I would wake up back in Widow's Vale and this whole trip to Europe would have been a dream. Hunter would be there, smiling at me and he'd kiss me good morning, and then we'd go and hang out with Bree, Robbie, Sky, Raven, Alisa, Jenna, Sharon, Ethan, and Simon all day. Just friends having fun. Then I was jolted back to reality. Harsh, ruthless, bitingly cold reality.

This hurt too much to be a dream.

_It hurts to want everything  
__And nothing at the same time  
I want what's yours and I want what's mine  
I want you  
__But I'm not giving in this time_

"Morgan?"

I didn't turn around. I had sensed Bree, Robbie, and Raven approaching behind me a few moments ago.

"Morgan, what happened?" Bree whispered, a tired urgency in her voice. She sounded exhausted. I looked over my shoulder at her. Robbie and Raven were both supporting one of her arms. Her ankle looked like it had been twisted.

"Is he –" Robbie began, staring at Mike's body. His voice constricted, and he couldn't finish his sentence.

When I didn't answer either of their questions, Bree raised her voice, still staring at me with a kind of severe intensity. "Morgan, what happened?"

"I beat the bad guy," I said calmly. I held my hand over my eyes and whispered, "_Clear my tears_." My eyes instantly felt drier, and I sincerely hoped the glamour would cover up any redness. Why couldn't I have inherited any of Killian's skills from Ciaran?

"How'd you do it?" Raven asked.

I stood up, my legs steady and unwavering. Bree, Robbie, and Raven stared at me. Ignoring the question, I said, "We should get to the hospital."

Bree looked confused, disoriented, and altogether lost. "Why?"

"Hunter and Sky," I said simply. "They crashed into the mausoleum wall." I paused. "We should make sure they're okay."

When I walked away, what choice did they have but to follow me? Bree was crying; maybe it was seeing Mike … like that. Lying there. I shook my head. Bree could shut down her emotions at the drop of a hat. If she was dying inside, she would have a thousand-watt smile on her face. Her ankle must have just hurting her really badly.

"I can't feel anything," I heard Robbie whispering. "Pain, relief, anything …"

I should have been frightened by how much I agreed with him, but I stopped myself from thinking about it; it wouldn't do any good now.

_Goodbye to you  
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew  
You were the one I loved  
The one thing that I tried to hold on to  
The one thing that I tried to hold on to_

_And when the stars fall  
__I will lie awake  
__You're my shooting star_


	30. Traditions

**Disclaimer**: Oh, my God … I can't believe how close this story is to being … done! Lol, I still have a few chapters up my sleeve, but look for it to end around … hmm, this is Part 30, so … I don't know, 34? 35? That might even be too many. No more than five, that's for sure. I already have ideas for my next story, though—and, yes, it will be a _Sweep _story, so never fear! Check my profile for a brief summary of it. It's going to focus on Hunter and Sky's lives before they moved to New York. It should be interesting :D If you want the written version of the funeral ritual that they perform, just ask and I'll e-mail it to you! Anyhoo, thanks for putting up with me for so long! Review when you're done! Oh, and if you really can't figure out who Morgan is talking to at the end, just ask in a review. (cough)NewYork(cough)

Taintedpromises: Lol, so now instead of threatening each other, are we mentioning whatever we're listening to at the moment? I'm not really listening to anything right now. I'm streaming TV clips … hmm … anyway, ack! I'm almost done! (deep breath) Wow, I still can't believe it. It's taken me almost a year to write this story. I'm going to miss it so much! (sob)

nikki: Hehe, thanks! That's one of my favorite chapters, and I do enjoy the ass-kicking aspects of writing this story, so … :D

moonfirefairy: Hmm … you asked two questions, so I guess I'll answer them in order. 1) Do Beck and Shelagh know that Morgan is Ciaran and Maeve's daughter? I get why you're confused. I never really put that into the story, but if I had to take a guess, being the author, I'd say that Hunter probably hasn't mentioned that to them. As we know, Shelagh is a very opinionated witch, and she probably wouldn't approve of Hunter dating Morgan if she knew who Morgan's parents were. Beck would probably be all right with it, but it wasn't something I really explored. Yes, they do know that Morgan and Hunter are dating, though, because I think that would be fairly obvious to anyone. As to the muirn beatha dan issue, I'd say probably not. Hunter and Sky both have some problems with their guardians/parents, so it doesn't seem to me the sort of thing he'd be willing to share with them just yet. If I was continuing the story, I'd definitely bring Shelagh and Beck to New York (just for a visit) or … (gasp) maybe even Hunter and Sky back to England to continue the story lines and character development. Who knows? There should be quite a bit of Shelagh and Beck in the story I'm going to post when I'm done with this, so be on the lookout!

VKC: I'm sorry to keep you waiting so long! I guess if you don't review again I'll know that you really did die …

**Part XXX**: Traditions

_Are you drowning or waving?  
I just want you to save me  
Should we try to get along?  
Just try to get along_

**Hunter**

I took in very little of what happened in the next few days. Most of them were spent in a sort of haze. Everything around me seemed very white and blurry, and I knew that I could hear voices talking near me, but I couldn't make out quite what they were saying. I'm not even sure how many days passed before I awoke from the unconsciousness that had engulfed me after that night in the cemetery. When I opened my eyes, blinking furiously to adjust them to the harsh glare of the lighting above my head, I realized that I was in a hospital. Two realizations hit me very quickly, my mind jumping up and running again the instant I opened my eyes. Something must have happened after Sky and I had tried to rescue Morgan. That brought on two burning questions: 1) Where was Morgan? and 2) Where was Sky?

My desperate calls for a nurse, a doctor, my friends, anyone, were answered by Bree and Robbie, who ran into my room, all but tripping over each other as they tried to both get through the door at the same time. They both hugged me and I groaned in pain; my back was aching, and my head was beginning to pound.

"You're weak," Bree said, pushing me back so I was resting against the bed again. "Stay lying down. I'll get the others in here."

"Where's Sky?" I demanded, my voice scratchy. "Where's Morgan? What's going on?"

"Morgan is okay," Robbie said; he was hiding something. My eyes narrowed.

"Where's Sky?"

It wasn't until I had been awake for five hours, examined by every physician in the hospital, and declared out of jeopardy that I found out what had transpired in the cemetery after my little bout of unconsciousness. Something began to gnaw away at me the second that Bree told me the truth.

"Mike's dead?" I whispered, my mind unable to comprehend what she was telling me. "And he stopped the Diobhail?"

"That's what we think," she said apologetically. "Morgan hasn't exactly been Miss Share-all. She's grieving." She paused. "At least, we think she is. She doesn't want to see either one of you. Sky's been awake for a few hours now and Morgan still won't go in her room."

"How did it happen?"

"A single stab wound," Bree said, her voice quivering slightly. "The local police are opening up a homicide investigation, but Morgan's got them thinking that she got hit on the head and can't remember anything." She sighed. "I hate to admit it, but the Portrush police are profoundly stupid."

"I can't believe this," I whispered, my voice so quiet I could barely hear myself. "And he stopped them? He killed them all?"

"That's Morgan's story," Bree said with a shrug. She gave a weak smile. "But it's over. The Diobhail are gone. This is all over and summer almost is, too. We have to get back to New York soon. We still have school."

Thinking about anything became too exhausting. I finally persuaded one of the doctors who came in to fix an IV drip in my arm to move me into Sky's room so that I could see her and Robbie and Bree and Raven all together. My cousin was looking paler than usual, and she was sporting a large gauze wrap on her forehead. But she was sitting up in bed when Robbie wheeled me in with a wheelchair.

"Oh, it's nothing," she said dismissively, seeing my eyes widen when I saw the huge bruise on her arm. "Just a little internal bleeding."

"A little?" a voice in the corner asked. "Yes, that's all it was. You were smashed into a mausoleum and it was just a little."

I started and looked at the opposite side of the room. Alexis was sitting in a wheelchair there, filing her nails calmly. I stared.

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought you were smart, Hunter," she said with a warm smile. "Of course Killian brought you here. It's the closest place to the cemetery." She looked genuinely happy to see me. "It's such a relief to see you all again."

"And you're okay?" I asked in surprise.

"Of course," she said. "Of course, I may never be able to walk again, but …" She shrugged. "It's all right. I'm moving on. I've got a therapy appointment in about half an hour."

I was unable to grasp my mind around the surrealism of everything happening around me. "Where is dear Killian, anyway? He's the one that brought us here?"

"He, um …" Sky looked uncomfortable. "He left. I suppose being in a hospital was too much for him. After Mike …"

"And Morgan?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from possibly darker topics. "I want to see her."

"She's downstairs with Beck," Robbie said. "She actually hasn't left the waiting room."

"Uncle Beck is here?" I asked in surprise, looking at Sky. She nodded.

"The hospital found him in Oxford," she said. "He called Ma at Pemberley, too. She should be here by tomorrow."

"Can we eat anything?" I asked, feeling my mouth beginning to water as Bree opened a small package of candies and popped one into her mouth. "I'm starving."

"Not as of yet," Sky said grumpily. "Something about 'upsetting our already battered and bruised bodies.' That nurse acts as if it was our fault we got chucked into a mausoleum."

"Who told you about Mike?" I asked her quietly.

Her eyes saddened almost immediately. "Raven did. It's just …" She shook her head and blinked back tears. "It's too horrible to think about."

"I can't even begin to imagine," Bree whispered. "You know, what she's going through?"

"I can," I said softly.

No one had much to say to that. Sky took my hand comfortingly, and I smiled slightly at her. I just wanted to see Morgan, but from the sound of it, she wasn't really up for visiting us.

"She'll come around," Sky whispered. "She just needs some time to herself. To … sort things out."

I nodded. I understood that more than anyone, but it still hurt. I wanted to see her. I wanted to tell her that I was there for her. I had experienced first-hand the sort of pain that she was struggling with now.

"This might sound mad, but …" Sky paused. "Maybe what she really needs is that. To be alone."

I looked at her curiously.

"I mean, there's bound to be a certain amount of … _blame_, isn't there?" she continued, looking worried. "She's going to be blaming us. For not stopping Muireadhach from hurting him like that."

"But that's unfair," Alexis whispered. "I mean, you guys were out cold and bleeding to dea—" she stopped quickly. "Um, not doing so well. When all that went down."

"That's not how Morgan will see it," Sky said sullenly.

I didn't want to think about what they were saying. The fact that I was already feeling a certain amount of guilt about what had transpired in the cemetery that night … it just made it worse. To know that Morgan was probably feeling the same thing. She was wondering why we hadn't been able to stop the Diobhail.

"Have you even heard her side of the story?" I asked tightly. "I mean, what happened after we got put out of commission?"

"Apparently Mike did some spell to kill all of the Diobhail," Bree said sadly. "But it was too much for him and he was really weak. Muireadhach got to him and …" Her voice caught and she looked away. "But it was quick, she said. And then Muireadhach followed suit. With the dying and all."

There was silence for a long, uncomfortable moment. I was staring at my hands, feeling a well of despair opening inside of me for Morgan. She must be suffering so much. I was torn out of my reverie when the hospital door opened and I saw the welcome face of Uncle Beck.

"Hey, Giomanach," he said with a smile as he hugged me.

"Thanks for coming, Uncle Beck," I said, feeling so glad to see him I thought I might burst. I had always felt safe around him.

"Are those snacks I see?" Sky asked, eying what he was carrying in his hands.

"Oh, yes," he said quickly, setting what was easily the largest gift basket I had ever seen in my life down on the bedside table. "Little gifts from some people in my coven. They're very appreciative of what the lot of you did for them, so they're trying to repay some kindness."

It took me a moment to realize that Morgan had come upstairs with Uncle Beck. She was standing in the doorway, watching everyone else with an unreadable look on her face. She looked up and saw me looking at her, and I started. She looked so different. Not physically, of course, but … there was something different in her eyes. She looked … older, somehow.

"This was so kind of them," Sky was saying, looking through the gift basket. "Salted plums, macadamias, watermelon seeds, raisins …" She held up a package wrapped with a red ribbon. "Hey, Hunter, they even brought banana chips!"

"I sincerely hope these aren't also made with potatoes," Bree said, popping one into her mouth.

I wasn't looking at them; I was looking at Morgan, who had wandered from her position by the door to the edge of my bed. We just looked at each other for a moment. If it still didn't hurt to move, I would have pulled her into a hug. She looked so lost.

I opened my mouth to say something, but she held up a hand.

"I'm not … I'm not ready to talk yet," she said, so quietly that the others couldn't hear her.

I nodded. That was all that I needed to hear.

"All right," I whispered. I would wait for her. That was all that I could do.

However, as Robbie tossed Morgan a package of dried apricots, I couldn't help the uneasy feeling that rose inside of me. Something didn't seem right with the scene before me. There was something different about Morgan, something I couldn't put my finger on.

_So we move  
__We change by the speed  
__Of the choices that we made  
__And the barriers are all self-made  
__That's so retrograde _

_Are you drowning or waving?  
__I just need you to save me  
__Should we try to get along?  
__Just try to get along_

The next day was possibly one of the most painful of my life. Aunt Shelagh had arrived around three in the morning, rushing into our room with wild eyes, her coat soaked with the rain that was pounding against the hospital walls, and nearly strangling both Sky and I to death with her "I'm-so-glad-you're-okay" hugs. She and Uncle Beck had managed to convince one of the doctors to allow Sky and I to leave the hospital—under strict supervision from our guardians, of course—for the funeral.

We decided not to hold it at the Ballynigel cemetery. None of us were quite ready to venture back there just yet. Uncle Beck and Aunt Shelagh found a place near the river on the outskirts of Portrush that would be a good place. It was a small plateau, grassy and secluded, hidden by a sloping hill. Two days later found us standing in a circle around the chosen gravesite. The local coroner's office had already enlisted a funeral home to dig the grave. I was filled with an emotion that I couldn't put into words as I sat in my wheelchair next to Uncle Beck, a slight breeze rippling around me. It was a beautiful day. The deep blue sky was filled with puffy clouds, and it was warm and sunny.

Uncle Beck and Aunt Shelagh had kindly offered to fill the roles of High Priest and High Priestess in the ritual as Sky and I were both still wheelchair-ridden. The coffin in front of us was open, but … the body … we couldn't see it. The coroners had wrapped Mike's body in white linen, and I bit my lip slightly. It made everything a little easier. I didn't know if I'd be able to help with the ritual if I had to see Mike in front of me like that.

Aunt Shelagh's face was expressionless, her voice calm as a breeze ruffled her green robe gently. It didn't even flicker the flame of the black taper that she held. "This is a place which is not a place, in a time which is not a time, halfway between the worlds of the Gods … and of the mortals."

Next to her at the head of the coffin stood Uncle Beck, looking very somber in black robes that matched his dark hair. Bree, Robbie, Raven, Killian, Alexis, Sky, and I stood around them in an evenly-dispersed circle. The girls were all wearing black robes, and Robbie, Killian, and I were wearing blood-red. Morgan stood directly opposite Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck, her face impassive. She hadn't spoken to me since she had in our hospital room. As she was now, she wasn't showing any emotions at all.

Alexis was crying softly as she lit the pillar candle in her hands. "As the sun sets, so our friend has left us. The water of our tears, like the salt water of the sea and like the water of our mother's womb, blesses this circle."

"As life is a day," Killian began, "so our friend has passed into the night." I found my heart growing heavier. I knew what he was feeling all too well. I was reminded of Linden's funeral, one brother burying another. It should not have to happen. "The fire of our life, the memories and courage, the strength given to us by our friend, blesses this circle."

"As all that falls shall rise again," Sky continued, her voice weak, "so our friend will be reborn. The air we breathe, this treasure of our life, the compassionate caring we give each other, blesses this circle."

"As the earth forms us, so our friend shall return to the earth," Morgan said quietly. "Our Mother feeds us, clothes us, she gives us everything and in the end she takes our bodies back. Earth blesses this circle."

Uncle Beck looked at Aunt Shelagh, who had lost some of her perfect composure. She seemed truly touched by what was happening in front of her. "You are the Goddess, as are all women. You give birth. You feed the children from your own body, and you take them back for a new birth. World without end, eternal creation."

Aunt Shelagh took a deep breath and met his eyes unflinchingly. "And you are the God, as are all men. You are born. You live and you die, only to be born again. All-Father, All-Destroyer, ruler of the land of the dead."

"Birth and death," they both whispered, "over and over and over."

Aunt Shelagh turned after a moment and looked back at the coffin. I was suddenly glad that she was the one leading the ritual. I knew that if it were any of the other girls up there, they would have started crying. I wasn't even sure if Morgan, who was staring at her feet, could have done it.

"You … you are dead. But none should ever have to die alone. We are here to help you with your death."

Killian looked away as a few tears escaped his eyes.

"There is only love, the greatest mystery," she continued. "We reach behind our fear. We open our hearts and our eyes in the light of this love."

I bowed my head as a sign of respect, and I saw the others follow suit out of the corner of my eye.

"Our lives are formed of many others, and we form our lives in turn," Aunt Shelagh was saying. "And when we are here with you after you die, we honor your life."

Bree and Robbie joined hands as Bree sniffled slightly. Her eyes were red.

"There is only love. The love of the Goddess gives birth to the universe. The love of our parents gives birth to us. The love of our friends and family sustains our life. Kindness, love, and pleasure—we are formed in these and we form each other. When we die …" She paused. "We leave them behind us."

But did he deserve such a thing? To have everything taken away at such a young age?

"You have left your family. You have even left gender. You cannot be a man or a woman and enter the other world. You have left behind your body. None who have bodies can pass into the other world."

She took a deep breath and looked sideways at Uncle Beck for a moment. He nodded, so slightly I barely saw it. She looked back at the coffin.

"We never get to have the ones we love forever."

Bree let out a small sob as Raven, with a sound somewhere between a cry and a gasp, sank down to her knees next to Sky. Sky pulled her into an embrace and kissed her forehead lightly.

"But what we get to keep are the memories we built with those people. Those can never be taken away from us." Aunt Shelagh paused for a moment to regain control of herself and sighed deeply. "But the Goddess is taking you back now. Her womb is the earth that will receive your body. Your body is a seed now, a seed of other lives."

"In a sacred space we have gathered to honor you," Uncle Beck said quietly.

He and Aunt Shelagh stepped forward and, with a bit of effort, closed the coffin. As the lid sank down with a loud creak, Bree sniffled loudly and Robbie blinked away tears.

"The sun will rise again," I said softly.

"Life continues," Killian whispered.

Alexis sniffled. "Love is all that we can be sure of."

"Only the Mother is eternal," Morgan whispered finally.

There was something hauntingly beautiful and sorrowful at the same time about the ceremony. After the ritual, Uncle Beck took Sky, Alexis, and I back to the hospital and the rest went with Aunt Shelagh to the lodge to pick up everything we had left there. When they came back to the hospital, though, Morgan wasn't with them.

"Where is she?" I asked Robbie in surprise as the others trooped into the room without her.

"She wanted to stay at the lodge," he said with a shrug. "I guess she's … trying to recover. She needs to be alone."

I nodded slightly and went back to my dish of tapioca with a sigh. I knew that Morgan needed peace and quiet at the moment, but something felt … different. I just wanted to be around her, offer her silent support. She could probably really use it right about now …

_I am alive  
__I'm going to wait until the trials of confusion create  
__There are times when I feel the way we're about to break  
__When there's too much to say_

**Morgan**

I stared at the words on the polished marble tombstone, my face blank and expressionless.

**MICHAEL MacEWAN  
****1988 - 2004**

**BELOVED BROTHER  
****DEVOTED FRIEND**

**An áit a bhfuil do chroí is ann  
A** **thabharfas do chosa thú**

**Your feet will always bring you  
****To where your heart** **is**

A small flower, an orchid, sat on the mound of grass alone. I knew that Mike had liked orchids. He said he liked the way they smelled.

The words on the stone seemed so final. 1988 to 2004. Mike was there one day, and then he wasn't.

A small tear rolled down my cheek, so small that it shouldn't have counted as one. I didn't wipe it away.

_We are home now  
__Out of our heads  
__Out of our minds  
__Out of this world  
__Out of this time  
__Out of this time_

I miss you, Mike. But I won't let your gift go to waste.

I promise.

* * *

"Hi, sweetheart! How was your trip?" 

"… Fine."


	31. Welcome Home

**Disclaimer**: Okay, since apparently no one got it, the thing at the end was Morgan talking to her mom (or her dad, doesn't matter) when she gets back. Picture it: the airport. Big "welcome home" balloons literally cover the landscape. Morgan's mom goes, all smiley, "Morgan! We missed you! How was your trip?" Morgan is sullen and depressed, but forces a smile on her face and says, "Fine. It was fine." Get it? Get it? No? Oh, well. I tried. The end for this one is kind of weird, and some of you might be wondering what Morgan is thinking about, but all will be explained soon, I promise! Okay, normal disclaimer stuff: _Sweep _belongs to Cate Tiernan, the song belongs to Lifehouse, and my brain, having been taken away from me, belongs to the US Government and is in the process of being slowly destroyed by conservatism, Republicans, and Tom DeLay. Arg! The only things I own are the German ClubT-shirt that I'm wearing right now (Deutsch Klub!) and my little guinea pig Cini-Mini. But no one really owns her. She owns us. … … Anyhoo, enough of my weirdness. **Review** when you're done!

Taintedpromises: I'm a member of your site :proud smile: Lol, it's awesome—the world definitely needs more Sweep fan sites. I was working on one a while ago, but FreeWebs isn't that good unless you pay for a membership (I'm pretty sure my parents wouldn't give me 20 so I could make a website about a book series about witchcraft). Lol, my friend burned her _Buffy _CD for me last May, and it was literally the only thing I listened to all summer. Definitely have to agree with the puppy line … I was laughing my head off the first time I saw that and my brother was staring at me … he was like, "Who are you and what have you done with my sister? What's wrong with you?" But they've come to cherish my weirdness and accept me as one of their own ;)

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: If you were born in 1988, are you a sophomore or a junior? I was born in August of '89, but most other sophomores were born in '88. That sucks about your computer, though … the computer in our gameroom was clogged with spy-ware and myself, being too naïve to fix it, was away at a conference when it crashed :( The memory got totally erased, so all of my fanfiction was … :sniff: … gone! I almost cried, I swear. The moon ritual story sounds oddly enough like something I would do. Even if you didn't get the right night, at least you got to do it. I was in San Antonio on Ostara and we were in Dallas visiting friends on the full moon :growl: I want more holidays! How did it go, by the way? Lol … hey, do you have AOL instant messenger? Send me your screen name if you do! I'd love to talk to you sometime (my screen name is in my profile)!

VKC: Wow … I think you're the first anonymous reviewer who's ever reviewed more than once! At least on my story … you deserve an award! Now you're officially "The Anonymous Person Who Reviewed Twice" … CONGRATULATIONS :crowds cheer: Lol, um, not really, but thank you so much! I hate it when anonymous people review and they're like "Update now or I'll kill you!" and then they just disappear … :pause: Weird. Review again and you can have another honor: "The Anonymous Person Who Reviewed Thrice!"

**Part XXXI**: Welcome Home

_What day is it?  
__And in what month?  
__This clock never seemed so alive  
__I can't keep up and I can't back down  
__I've been losing so much time_

**Hunter**

Returning to New York was possibly one of the strangest experiences that I had ever gone through. Considering how many strange experiences I've had, that's saying a lot. It just felt so odd to sleep in my own bed again, to walk downstairs and see the living room in the house I shared with Sky. The disappearance of the elaborate foyer in the mansion in the middle of nowhere and the warm lobby of a lodge in a small Irish town with a fire crackling merrily seemed ominous and disconcerting.

The first thing that I did when Sky and I, after dropping everyone else off at home, finally got back to our house past midnight was drag my suitcase back upstairs and quite literally fall onto my bed. I didn't bother putting on pajamas or washing my face; the second that my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world. I had slept for about fifteen straight hours, but for some reason, when I awoke, I felt just as tired as when I had gone to sleep. That, coupled with the fact that I had a headache and that my room was stiflingly hot—England was never this warm in August—made for a horrible start to the day.

"Morning," Sky said as I walked into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes and blinking to shield them from the harsh light pouring in through the kitchen windows. "Or, afternoon, more like."

"Bloody hell …" I muttered. "What time is it?"

"Three o'clock. I just got up thirty minutes ago." Her light blonde hair was tousled, and she was sipping a cup of warm tea in an attempt to wake herself up. She looked just as tired as I felt.

"Where's Alexis?" I asked, looking back through the kitchen door to the living room. There was a rumpled blanket and a few pillows on the couch.

"She's asleep," Sky said, pulling a box of wheat cereal out of the cabinet. "I took the couch so she could sleep in a bed."

I stared at her. "Are you mad? You heard what Dr. Wick said. It's risky enough, us being on our feet so much. Bed rest, remember?"

"Hunter, I feel fine," she said firmly. "Well, not _fine. _I mean, there's still some stiffness in my neck and sometimes my back just gives this odd little spasm or something –" She broke off, seeing the horrified look on my face. "He told me it was normal! Would you stop worrying?" I just sighed and grabbed the cereal box, pouring myself a bowl as Sky spooned some sugar onto hers.

"I tried calling Bree, Robbie, and Raven, but their parents all said they were still sleeping," she said thoughtfully. "It must be jet lag."

"One would figure we'd be used to it by now," I said with a wry smile as I poured myself a cup of milk. "What with the number of transatlantic flights we've taken in our lives." I took a huge swallow of warm lemon tea and almost instantly felt a little better. "Did you, um … did you call Morgan, as well?"

Sky looked a little guilty. "I didn't want to bother her. She seemed disconnected enough yesterday and the past couple of days. I had assumed that we should just let her be for a bit … unless, I mean, you want to call her."

"No," I said quickly. "No, I think you're right. She needs some time to herself. Maybe I'll stop by later and see how she's doing. Just to be sure she's all right."

"Hunter, of course she's not all right," Sky said flatly. "Her brother just died. Do you expect her to be all right?"

I sighed internally. I had felt so separate from Morgan in the last few days; ever since we had talked in the hospital, I hadn't spoken to her with more than eleven words at a time. "Do you have your suitcase? You're sure you picked up everything?"

I couldn't help but wonder, though … this distant attitude, the withdrawing … the others had to have noticed it. It couldn't be healthy for Morgan, that's for certain. After Linden died, I know I would have been in an even worse place than I already was if I hadn't had Sky, Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, my cousins, and Alwyn to turn to for comfort.

"She could really use someone to talk to, huh?" Bree asked me later. Her father had obviously relayed the message that Sky had left at the Warren residence, which instructed her to call as soon as she woke up.

"Most likely," I sighed, holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear as I flipped through the television channels in the living room. "But she doesn't seem to want help, does she?"

"I just wish there was something more I could do for her than …" Her voice dropped. "Than just sitting here and feeling sorry for myself. For all of us, I mean."

"When does school start up again?" I asked. "It's sometime next week, isn't it? That ought to get your mind off things."

"Next Tuesday," Bree said, her voice growing increasingly depressed.

"Oh," I said, surprised. "That's the same day as our hearing with Judge McGilvray."

I could sense the smile behind Bree's next words. "That's great. I mean, it's so great that you guys are doing this for Alexis. I can tell how much it means to her." Her voice lowered. "I mean, do you think it'll go through? Do you think they'll do it? Let you and Sky be her legal guardians?"

I sighed deeply. "I hope so. It'd be better than sending her back to Ireland to the hospital. There's not a reason for her to even be there; it was sort of a holding pen, I suppose. While the doctors figured out just what to do with her."

"Judge McGilvray is cool," Bree said thoughtfully. "I had to go in front of her for a speeding ticket once. I bet she'll give you guys guardianship. I mean, you're great people and Alexis really needs that in her life."

I nodded, just thinking as Bree continued talking.

"I still can't believe we're going to be seniors next week. But I guess it'll give us an opportunity to talk to Morgan, won't it? We signed up for, like, almost the same schedule. We're bound to have some classes together."

"Yes, that …" I shrugged. "Or it'll be an opportunity for her to delve even deeper into the denial that she's thrown herself into. She'll bury herself in her schoolwork to try to forget what she's feeling inside."

"You sound like someone who knows from experience," Bree said calmly.

"I know," I said softly. "I _am_ speaking from experience. We can't let her do that. Otherwise …" I deliberately pushed aside some unhappy memories from my last year of school in England. I had been acting quite like Morgan was now, but that's another story. "Otherwise I don't want to think about what will happen. She'll shut down emotionally, and –"

"We have to nip this in the bud before it comes to that?"

I paused. "Something to that effect. Actually, I think I'm going to drop by her place now, see if she's awake. … And if she'll talk to me, of course."

"She'll open up to you, Hunter. She trusts you. Maybe time really is the best medicine here."

I sighed with a grim expression on my face. "Let's hope you're right."

_Because it's you and me  
__And all of the people  
__Nothing to do  
__Nothing to lose  
__And it's you and me and all of the people  
__And I don't know why  
__I can't keep my eyes off of you_

**Bree**

After I hung up the phone, I let out a deep sigh and reclined back on my bed, resting my back against the headboard, and just sat there for a long time. It felt so good after the chaos and the panic and the disorder of the last few weeks to have a moment to just do nothing. To just sit. Invariably, my mind began to wander.

As a general rule, I was a live-in-the-present type of person, but sometimes I still thought about how life once was for us. Before Cal and Selene, before Hunter and Sky … before those four people had introduced us to the world of magick and witchcraft. Things had been simple back then. The only things that Morgan, Robbie, and I had worried about was making good grades in school, getting our driver's licenses, keeping our social lives in check—I guess that was mostly me—and basically just being teenagers.

But things were so different, so fast, starting with that first day of our junior year. The day that Cal came to Widow's Vale and consequently changed our lives forever. I remember how hard Morgan and I fought over him. We both wanted something that we could never have. I was surprised—just as much as she was, I think—at how quickly our friendship fell apart over him. It made me wonder just how much of one we really had in the first place.

Cal seemed like the perfect guy. Handsome, smart, charming … a witch. That first night outside of town seems like so long ago, the night where all of us gathered in that desolate circle for a Mabon ritual. Even though it hasn't even been a year, it feels like forever ago. Those of us that stayed when he asked who wanted to participate? We willingly agreed to be part of the most incredible and frightening experiences of our lives.

For most of us, anyway. Some people who stayed that night didn't come again. Those of us that did, though … it was like we had signed some sort of pact. Suddenly I was hanging out with people that I had never spoken to in my life. Like, I maybe never would have even spoken to Raven if we hadn't met through Wicca; we came from completely different worlds. Likewise, I doubt that Raven would have ever foreseen having me, the Teen Fashion Queen, as a friend.

But things moved so quickly. I remember how mad I was at Morgan for kissing Cal that night at the cemetery on Samhain. I guess it was the first time I hadn't gotten something that I wanted, and I couldn't believe that Morgan, of all people, had been the one to get it. Morgan, my loser best friend, had gotten the hottest guy in school.

Weird.

I sort of pulled away after that, I guess. Raven and I recruited a few other people to join a new coven, and for a while, that was all we were concerned with. Wicca seemed all good, all the time. But I knew that something else was happening. Morgan was acting differently, and the presence of two new witches in Widow's Vale, a town that had never seen anything out of the ordinary in all its history, was a surprise to say the least. Hunter and Sky were something that none of us had ever seen before. Maybe it was the fact that they were so young and yet so in control of their lives. I mean, they moved oversees the year after they finished school. That's pretty major, if you ask me.

Things still weren't all that complicated, really. Sky told Raven and me and the rest of the original Kithic some amazing things about the witch world, incredible spells that she had seen her parents' coven do and the sorts of spells and rituals she and her coven back in England had used to do. We wanted to be a part of it; we jumped in headfirst … the mistakes we knew we were making, I suppose. We weren't prepared for some of the things we saw in the future.

I don't really remember much about the night that Robbie and I saved Morgan from being burnt alive in Cal's magick room … maybe I wasn't really thinking that night. The fact that my friend was in danger was all that was on my mind. It sort of hurt, you know? I had figured that maybe, by some freak of nature, Cal didn't want me and wanted Morgan instead. Sure. Maybe she and I could work past that eventually. I had never even thought of him being evil or a dark magic practitioner.

I almost quit Wicca then and there. I saw Morgan lying on the floor of the shed and I wanted to run away, quit studying something that I loved so much. I mean, the guy who introduced us to Wicca turned out to be this creepy dark magick guy with a psycho mom hell-bent on sucking power from other witches. It sort of shed a new, disturbing light on the whole thing, you know?

When Kithic and Cirrus became one coven, things were a little easier again, and not just because Kithic is such a cooler name than Cirrus. Hunter and Sky wanted to help Morgan and the rest of us recover from Cal's betrayal, which we all felt as a personal injury. And they did. Help us, that is.

I might have been skipping major parts of the stories of our lives, but rehashing it would, quite frankly, take hours that I didn't have. What happened can be summed up in one sentence: when we went to Ireland, everything was destroyed. We went to Ireland looking for a vacation, six teens just wanting to relax over their summer vacation before heading back to school. We left with more psychological and emotional baggage than any of us had ever carried in our lives.

I wondered just how Morgan and Hunter were doing. As far as I know, they're still not on the best of terms. I don't think that Morgan ever quite recovered from their blowout in the lodge lobby that one night. I guess that was the turning point of our time in Ireland; things went from bad to worse to even worse to holy-crap-can-things-get-any-worse. Hunter's comment still haunts her, I know. He still claims that it was accidental and he didn't mean to say such a thing, but I think that something said off the top of one's head is often more truthful than something premeditated and thought-out. I think he knows it, too.

Morgan and Hunter weren't the only ones affected by Ireland, though. Sky and Raven came back changed people, too, I guess. I mean, we all did, but them more so than Robbie and I, maybe. Hunter had remarked offhandedly after we had returned to Portrush that the unusually strong psychic link between them was indicative of the possibility that they were … whatever that fancy witch word is for soulmates. I think it's muirn beatha dans or something weird like that. I had never before thought of Raven as the committed type before she and Sky had started going out, but considering that I hadn't seen one without the other since that night in the cemetery, I'm guessing that they're in it for the long haul. I'm so happy for them, but it makes me wonder about Robbie and I.

I used to watch Morgan and Hunter and wonder if Robbie cares about me the way that Hunter obviously cares about Morgan. They were my hope, my hope that maybe, sometimes, once in a blue moon, love does turn out okay for some people. Now that they're split, or at least temporarily while Morgan works her feelings out, that hope has diminished slightly. I still see Raven and Sky, though. At least for them things are moving in the right direction. I see the looks they exchange, the little smiles, and I remember how Morgan and Hunter used to be the same way before everything was destroyed for them. Will the same thing happen to Sky and Raven?

Will the same thing happen to me and Robbie?

Sometimes I wonder if we're strong enough to face the challenges that Wicca will present to us. Hell, that _life _will present to us. God, I hope we are. I don't think I could survive if something tore us apart like that.

_All of the things that I want to say  
__Just aren't coming out right  
__I'm tripping on words  
__You got my head spinning  
__I don't know where to go from here_

**Hunter**

My heart pounded painfully in my chest as I climbed up the steps leading up the wrap-around porch on Morgan's house. The late afternoon had cooled, and it was no longer the eighty degrees it had been before. A warm breeze blew past me as I rang the doorbell once, forcing myself to stay as calm and collected as possible. I looked toward the driveway quickly; I couldn't see Das Boot and briefly wondered if Morgan was even home, but shook my head. She had been away for weeks. Her parents had probably kept it shacked up in the garage.

The door swung open after a minute, and I was greeted with the cheerful, smiling face of Mary K, Morgan's younger sister. Dressed in a pale yellow flowery tank top and a flared pink miniskirt, she looked like she belonged on the beach instead of in a sleepy town in upstate New York.

"Hey, Hunter!" she said, grinning. "Welcome back!"

I smiled. Mary K was certainly charismatic. "Hey, Mary K. I was just stopping by to see if Morgan was here."

Mary K's smile faded slightly. "Um, actually, she's not. She took Das Boot out about half an hour ago. Maybe she went to that weird witch store you guys all hang out at sometimes."

I nodded, unable to help the feeling of disappointment that rose within me. At least, I thought, Mary K seemed to have come to terms—at least somewhat—with the fact that Morgan and I were witches. She hadn't even had a look of disgust on her face when she mentioned "that weird witch store."

"Well, thank you, I suppose," I said after a moment. "I'll just come back later."

"Oh, hello, Hunter!" Mrs. Rowlands said, appearing at the door behind Mary K. "We were just about to have dinner. Would you like to stay? Sean made burgers on the grill in the back."

"More like, _tried _to make burgers on the grill in the back," Mary K amended. "Dad's never been much of a barbeque master."

"I do just fine, thank you very much," I heard Mr. Rowlands say from inside the house. I smiled, but shook my head.

"That's all right. I have to get back home anyway. You'll tell Morgan I stopped by?"

"Of course," Mrs. Rowlands said warmly. "I'll have her call you."

It was with a heavy heart that I started up my car engine again and pulled back out of the Rowlands' driveway. Where had Morgan disappeared to? Why wouldn't she talk to me? I sighed as I turned onto the road that would lead me back towards the main part of town. Widow's Vale seemed like an entirely different place now, but at least I still remembered my way home.

_Because it's you and me  
__And all of the people  
__With nothing to do  
__Nothing to prove  
__And it's you and me and all of the people  
__And I don't know why  
__I can't keep my eyes off of you_

**Morgan**

The week that passed between the time that we got back to New York and that school started was one of the longest of my life. My parents threw a welcome home bash for me when I got back with Aunt Eileen and Paula. I put on a happy face for all of them, pretending that I had missed them all over the summer as I handed out the tiny souvenirs I had gotten at the airport in Dublin when all I really wanted to do was run out the door and disappear. The fake smile I had on my face all night was literally killing me inside. They weren't supposed to be asking me about Ireland and what had happened. Those were two separate worlds that weren't supposed to meet.

I had a ton of summer reading to finish for AP Literature, which I would start on Tuesday, so I spent most of the next few days at the park by the elementary school, sitting on the swings or at a picnic table, surrounded by laughing kids enjoying their last week of summer break while I immersed myself in _The Grapes of Wrath_.

I avoided my house like the plague. Mom and Dad were forever questioning me, asking "What did you see in England? Did you go to Piccadilly Circus? What did you see in Ireland? Did you spend much time in Dublin? Did you visit Trinity University? You know, it's quite a good school, I bet you could get in if you applied as an international student …" Mary K wasn't much better. The whole time, she kept pestering me for details about if I met any hot European guys and, if I had, what Hunter's reaction was—which, evidently, she's sure was hilarious.

Eventually I got so tired of their constant questions and happy faces that the only time I spent in the house at all was sleeping and eating. I took Das Boot out for the rest of the day, reading at the park for hours at a time and sometimes just driving around. I hadn't seen Hunter or any of my friends since we had gotten back, nor had I talked to any of them. I finally decided to stop by Bree's house late on Sunday afternoon, but her dad said that she was out with Robbie and Sky, who were helping Raven move her stuff to her new dorm at the NYU campus near Red Kill.

I sighed as I pulled Das Boot out of the Warren's winding driveway. Mom had expressly forbidden me to miss dinner again, but somehow the thought of driving back home didn't quite appeal to me. I called the house and Mary K picked up the phone. Pretending I had run out of gas near the Exxon station, I told her that I'd be home as soon as I could.

"Oh, by the way," she said just before she hung up, "Hunter called earlier. He was looking for you … again. Have you even seen him since you got back?"

I didn't answer her question. "Thanks for telling me. I'll call him back as soon as I can." Of course I wouldn't. But I knew that unless I said I was going to, Mary K would start lecturing me about how lucky I was to have a boyfriend as hot as Hunter and about how I was taking advantage of how much he obviously cares about me. I just hung up and looked up at the sky. It was starting to get dark.

I pulled Das Boot off to the side of the road and opened up the trunk to look at the various things I had assembled in there. It was almost dark enough to head to the cemetery.

_Something about you now  
__I can't quite figure out  
__Everything she does is beautiful  
__Everything she does is right  
__  
Because it's you and me  
__And all of the people  
__With nothing to do  
__Nothing to lose  
__And it's you and me  
__And all of the people  
__And I don't know why  
__I can't keep my eyes off of you_

**Hunter**

As night descended outside the living room windows, I sat on the couch. The television was making noise in the distance, but I wasn't listening to it. Alexis was upstairs meditating and I was flipping absentmindedly through an old issue of _Pointe_, one of the many dance magazines that Sky subscribes to. She had thrown out all of the issues of _Newsweek_ that had arrived since we had been gone, claiming that world news nowadays was too depressing to keep lying about the house for more than a week anyway. I tossed the magazine aside, not really caring that they had managed to hook an interview with Washington Ballet's Elizabeth Gaither—"An exclusive interview reveals wonderful tips!"—and looked at the phone on the table next to me sadly.

I heaved a sigh and wandered back upstairs. I supposed Morgan wasn't planning on calling me back tonight. Sadly enough, I had grown used to it in the past week.

_You and me and all of the people  
__With nothing to do  
__Nothing to prove  
__And it's you and me  
__And all of the people  
__And I don't know why  
__I can't keep my eyes off of you_

**Morgan**

The last day of summer break disappeared quickly, morning melting into day and day disappearing into night as I bought new school supplies, realized with a gasp that I was signed up for three AP classes in the same semester, and finally unpacked my backpack so I could put my new binders in it.

Unfortunately for the first day of my senior year, though, my alarm clock refused to go off in the morning. Mary K ran into my room, waving her hair straightener around like a maniac and yelling that we would be late if I didn't get my butt into motion.

I sighed. It was time to face the world.

_And of all the people  
__I don't know why  
__I can't keep my eyes off of you_


	32. Deceit

**Disclaimer**: Normally what I do in disclaimers is babble incoherently for a few hundred words and then finally get on with the story, so I'll keep this short: characters are not mine. Story is mine. Lyrics are not mine. Lyrics are Jem's. One of Robbie's lines is Joss Whedon's. Are we cool? Cool :D

Taintedpromises: Hunter doesn't have a TV? Huh. Well, now he does. Lol, I completely spaced on that … or maybe I never read it. Oh, well. Maybe he fell subject to whimsy and decided to buy one someday that Cate Tiernan never wrote about. Fear the whimsy! Lol, anyhoo, your idea for the end is really good and not crappy as you thought. I had something else in mind, but your idea makes a lot of sense, too. Remember that Morgan's distancing herself from her friends isn't just about her grief over Mike dying. She's hiding the fact that she used dark magick to kill all of the Diobhail. I can't see Hunter being too happy about that, can you? And, as we'll see at the end of this chapter, she's been hiding something else from them all, too …

VKC: This has to be some kind of record. The same anonymous person reviewing three times? (gasp) Be still my heart! Please keep reviewing! I get depressed when people don't review and I take out my rage on my little brothers. For their sake, review again! (But, then, I don't really expect you to care about them. I mean, I hardly do, so why should you?) :P

Raynornlimegreen: You're not stupid, idiotic, unintelligent, rash, dim, reckless, thick, lacking judgment, foolhardy, dense, wretched, slow, dismal, dull, pathetic, brainless, sad, dim-witted, pitiable, obtuse, weak, unwise, useless, foolish, feeble, silly, inflexible, daft, tenacious, imprudent, or mulish. Wow, the thesaurus _is _fun! Lol, I was wondering what had happened to you. Welcome back! Hehe, don't forget to review again or something verrry bad will happen to you! Mwahaha!

**Part XXXII**: Deceit

_I wish this could be a happy song  
__But my happiness disappeared  
__The moment you were gone  
__Don't think I ever believed that  
__This day would come  
__Now all I'm feeling  
__Is lost and numb_

**Morgan**

All that Mary K talked about on the way to school in between bites of her Nutri-Grain breakfast bar was about how she hoped she had a ton of hot guys in her new classes and how scared she was to take her first-ever AP class and how she couldn't wait to see her friends again—even though, I reminded her, she had gone to a pool party with all of them yesterday. I skidded Das Boot into my parking spot about two minutes before the tardy bell was due to ring; there were only a few stragglers still wandering around the quad. I raced into the building, mentally kicking myself for not having time to go to my locker, and had barely sat down in a seat in Room B205, AP Literature, when the bell rang. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Looking around the room as the teacher, Mrs. Sherwood, began the traditional spiel about how this was an AP class and thus required us to bend over backwards under the imminent homework load, I noticed that Bree was in the class, too. She was sitting next to Stephen Floyd and totally flirting with him. I looked over at her twice over the class period, which seemed to be dragging on _forever_, and she was looking at me both times. I smiled brightly at her each time and looked at Mrs. Sherwood with a comical expression on my face. She must have been older than God. From how close she held her papers to her face, it was obvious that she could barely see a foot in front of her.

My morning didn't improve much from there. Even though I had another class with Bree before lunch, I didn't have time to talk to her before AP Chemistry was over and we were once again rushing to our next class, laden down with parent information sheets about dual-credit courses and a bunch of announcements about upcoming senior events. I saw a poster announcing Homecoming for the end of September and sighed. Normally I'd ask Hunter if he'd go with me, but I wasn't quite sure how things were working out with us.

I was standing at my new locker and trying to shove another binder into my book bag when I caught sight of Amy Bennet, who had been in my Literature and Composition class the year before. I waved her over with a big smile.

"Hey, Amy!" I said happily. "How was your summer?"

"Oh, it was fantastic!" she gushed, tossing her red hair over her shoulder. "My dad took me and my family to our summer house on South Padre Island in the Gulf of Mexico and we spent the whole summer on the beach."

I grinned. "No wonder, I thought you looked really tan."

"Thanks! So what did you do? I heard someone saying that you and Bree Warren and Robbie Gurevitch spent some time in Europe."

I shrugged. "Yeah, we did England and Ireland. It was a snooze-fest."

I heard a snort from behind me and saw Bree standing next to her new locker, one manicured eyebrow raised and a look of utter disgust on her unblemished face.

"Sure, if that's all you want to say about it."

She turned on her heel and stalked off angrily towards the cafeteria, her light green flared skirt swishing behind her. I watched her go calmly.

Amy looked at me with her nose wrinkled. "What's with her?"

"Who knows?" I shrugged. "She's been like that ever since we got back." My face brightened up. "Hey, seniors can go off-campus for lunch, right?"

Amy grinned broadly. "Yes, thank God. Do you have lunch now?"

"Yeah," I said. "You want to go to Double Dave's and grab a pizza? We can take my car."

"Sure!"

As Amy and I headed towards the parking lot, I looked back over my shoulder to see Bree still watching me from the entrance to the cafeteria. She was standing next to Robbie, and they were whispering something to each other while looking at me. Robbie looked a little guilty. I just smiled and waved to both of them before following Amy out of the school.

_And I know I promised  
__That I would try  
__But I miss you  
__And it's killing me inside_

**Hunter**

"Hunter, would you stop picking at your tie?" Sky asked irritably. "We're nervous enough without you sitting there fidgeting like a rabbit."

I sighed and straightened my tie once more before resting my hands on my lap. "Sorry. I'm only nervous, as well."

Alexis gave a little snort. She was the worst out of the three of us; she could barely keep still, bouncing up and down slightly in her wheelchair. "You're nervous? At least if we lose you don't get sent back to some hospital in the middle of nowhere."

"It's not about losing," Sky said soothingly. "It's about Judge McGilvray and hoping she'll grant us guardianship of you. If she doesn't, well …" Her eyes suddenly widened in alarm. "What if she doesn't?" She turned to look at Sean Franklin, who was sitting next to her. "What if she doesn't, Sean?"

Sean Franklin's father, Timothy, was Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck's attorney back in England. Mr. Franklin had sent his son to study law in the states at Columbia University. Now, he was acquiring his second doctorate in international law study (his first was in criminal justice). Uncle Beck had recommended that we contact him about Alexis's case, and I had to remember to call him and thank him after this was all over. I honestly could not have asked for a better attorney than Sean.

"She will," he said firmly to Sky. "You two have a great case. There's nothing to worry about."

A security guard poked his head out of the doors leading into Judge McGilvray's courtroom. We were seated on the hard wooden benches outside, nervously waiting our turn to face the judge.

"Judge McGilvray will see y'all now," the security guard said in a strong southern accent. I looked at Sky and Alexis, both of whom had gone pale.

"Ready?" I asked with a forced upbeat tone.

"All right," Judge McGilvray was saying a few minutes later, looking through a file at the bench. She was a thin older woman with blondish-gray hair and humongous spectacles that gave her the appearance of an owl. "We're here to decide if Hunter Niall and Sky Eventide …" She looked over at the table where Sky, Alexis, Sean, and I were seated. "Those would be the blondes, I assume?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Sky said.

"Wonderful, wonderful …" Judge McGilvray said absently, examining the papers in front of her closely. "All right, we're here to decide if Mr. Niall and Ms. Eventide should receive guardianship of a Miss Alexis Rody?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Sean said, standing up to address her. "Your Honor, Mr. Niall and Ms. Eventide are responsible adults and, I assure you, very capable of providing a safe home for Alexis."

"It says here that Ms. Rody suffers from an incurable disease?" Judge McGilvray asked, blinking at Sean. "Would you please explain this little complication to me, Mr. Franklin?"

"Ms. Rody suffers from hereditary ataxia," Sean said, and I looked at him in surprise. He had even gone to the trouble to research Alexis's disease to help us? "It's a degenerative disorder. Ms. Rody has, however, been on a treatment for some years now in which enzyme supplements allow her to lead an almost normal life." He bit his lip. "Extenuating circumstances involving sudden and unexpected rapid deterioration of muscle in her legs has led to her being wheelchair-bound for life now, but she was recently given a clean bill of health—or, as clean as is possible—by a qualified surgeon in Ireland."

"Mr. Niall and Ms. Eventide, are you involved in a romantic relationship?" the judge asked.

Sky looked revolted. "I should say not! He's my cousin."

Judge McGilvray looked comforted. "Well, that's a relief. You share a house in Widow's Vale, correct?"

"Yes, Your Honor," I said.

"Is the house appropriately designed for a wheelchair-bound patient?"

"Not as of now, Your Honor, but a contractor is scheduled to visit on Thursday," Sky said. "He's going to give us an estimate for what it would take to reconfigure the house for a wheelchair. As of now, we're in the process of redecorating a bedroom on the first floor for her."

Judge McGilvray closed her file and looked at Sky and I, examining us through her owlish spectacles. "And just how are you planning on supporting Ms. Rody? Financially, I mean?"

"Um, Your Honor?" Sean said, standing and interrupting me as I opened my mouth to speak. "If you'll check inside the file, there is a written note from Ms. Rody that will answer that question."

I looked at Sky in surprise. She looked just as surprised as I did and looked at Alexis, who had a conveniently innocent expression on her face.

Judge McGilvray flipped through the file and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper. I could see pen markings through the paper. She scanned it for a moment before reading it aloud. "After receiving guardianship of me, Hunter Niall and Sky Eventide will receive control of my trust fund, stocks portfolio, and savings account, all of which were set up by my late mother. The combined accounts have an estimated value of …" Her voice grew very high. "Four million dollars?"

Sky stared at Alexis, her eyes wide with shock. "_Four million dollars_!"

"Is there a problem, Ms. Eventide?" Judge McGilvray asked.

"No, Your Honor," Alexis said firmly.

"Alexis, we can't accept that," Sky whispered, her voice low and her eyes still wide.

"Ms. Rody?" the judge asked quickly, and Alexis turned to look at her. "Ms. Rody, I understand that these people are your friends, and you clearly trust them, but I must ask … do you trust them enough to allow them access to these accounts?"

Alexis's answer was simple and so obviously sincere that I felt tears welling in my eyes. "Yes." After a moment, she continued. "I trust them more than anyone in the world."

Judge McGilvray continued to look at her for a moment before looking at Sean. "Mr. Franklin?"

"Your Honor, my clients care for Ms. Rody a great deal," Sean said, his voice thick with emotion. "They have never wanted anything but what is best for her, and she trusts them because of this. Before Ms. Rody was wheelchair-bound, Mr. Niall and Ms. Eventide helped her experience the joy of being able to walk again, something no doctor said she could ever do again. Now, Ms. Rody has the chance to once again have a family that loves her." He shrugged. "Should they be her guardians? With all due respect, it seems to me that they already are."

After a moment, Judge McGilvray looked at Alexis. "You seem to be a sensible young girl. You will enroll at Widow's Vale High School, of course."

"Of course," Alexis said quickly.

"You will ensure that your new guardians do not abuse the privilege of access to your bank accounts?"

"Definitely," Alexis said.

My eyes went wide. "Wait, did you say 'new guardians'?"

Judge McGilvray smiled. "Yes, Mr. Niall, I did. I see no reason to deny this request. Congratulations, Mr. Niall and Ms. Eventide. I am granting you full custody of the juvenile, 16-year-old Alexis Rody. Bailiff, bring in the next case after a five-minute recess." And she was gone.

Sky let out a happy squeal and hugged Alexis, who grinned broadly as a few tears of happiness leaked out of her eyes. I shook Sean's hand enthusiastically and hugged Sky, who looked positively radiant with delight.

I stared at Alexis after a moment, another thought coming to me. "_Four million dollars_!"

"Water under the bridge," she said, shrugging it off. "Come here."

I just grinned and hugged her. Maybe things here would turn out all right after all.

_I'll always be thankful  
__For the time we had  
__We were blessed  
__I should celebrate  
__But I feel too sad  
__All the wonderful memories  
__Just make me fall apart  
__And it feels like somebody's  
__Stabbed me in my heart_

**Bree**

"Something is wrong with Morgan!"

"She's acting like nothing even happened over the summer!"

"She's acting like everything is perfectly normal!"

"Is this just denial? Because, if it is, it's the worst case I've ever seen."

"_Would you all just shut up for a moment?_"

I guess that Robbie, Raven, and I must have hurt Sky's ears from yelling so loudly, but I couldn't care less at the moment. The three of us had grouped at Hunter and Sky's house that evening to give them the lowdown on what had happened at school that day. They had enlisted our help to finally find Morgan and see just what had happened since we got back. I felt sort of guilty for breaking the bubble of happiness surrounding them because their motion to gain guardianship of Alexis had gone through, but at the moment, I figured there were more important issues at hand.

"She wasn't herself today," I said furiously. "She was some prepped-up, hyper, happy little cheerleader who didn't just lose a brother!"

Sky sighed and rested her elbows against the kitchen counter, burying her face in her hands. Hunter was already sitting down, and his expression was grim.

"I don't know," Sky sighed. "I don't know what to do about her. She doesn't want to face this on her own, and we can't _make _her face it."

"Well, she wasn't herself," Raven said. "She's not dealing with this like she should be. I learned at least that much from psychology last year."

"You weren't even there today," I said pointedly.

"No, but I think it's been established that Morgan needs help. Now."

Robbie sat down on the barstool at the counter and sighed before a hopeful expression crossed his face. "Maybe we need to spend more time with her. We've barely seen her since we've been back, and maybe having her bestest of best friends around would help. You know, like group therapy? Maybe we could have weekly dinners over here …" He thought for a moment. "Or a book club. Maybe videos?"

"This isn't something that's going to be fixed by a video club," Alexis said dourly.

"And I don't really feature the idea of a group intervention," Hunter continued. "From my experience, they tend to end in yelling, arguing, and the occasional violence." He paused. "She's in a fragile enough state as it is. I think that if we tip the scale in one direction too far … the consequences could be disastrous. For all we know …" His voice tightened. "We're losing her as we speak."

No one said anything for a long while. The silence was pressing, but I didn't see what any of us could say to make the situation better. Short of a group intervention, I hadn't really been able to think of anything to help Morgan.

Sky stood up after a moment, her face set with an unreadable expression.

"You know, it's getting late," she said. I took the hint and nodded after a moment with a resigned feeling of disappointment inside me. She had given us the invitation to leave if we wanted to, and I stood up.

"Yeah," I said, looking at Robbie. "I have a ton of homework. What teacher assigns work on the first day of school, I ask you?"

"Apparently only the psycho ones," he said with a small smile. I followed him out of the kitchen after saying good night to the others and heard Sky murmur something about how she was going to bed.

"Ready to go?" Robbie asked as he pulled on his jacket and held open the door. I cast a last look towards the kitchen. Sky and Hunter were looking at each other with worried expressions on their faces, but they looked something else, too—maybe empathetic. I sighed. If only Morgan would listen to them …

"Yeah," I said quietly. "Let's go."

_And it's killing inside  
__Yes, I miss you  
__I want you by my side  
__Walking, holding hands  
__Talking, making plans  
__Touching my heart and soul_

**Raven**

"What's wrong?" I asked Sky softly as she stepped into her room and closed the door behind her. She looked at me in surprise.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You haven't been yourself lately. None of us have, but … what's bothering you?"

She raised her eyebrows as she ran a brush through her hair at the mirror. "Nothing, really. I'm fine."

"I saw that chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake you got at Cheesecake Factory yesterday," I said flatly. "You only excess in comfort food when you're upset and trying not to show it." I couldn't help but smile slightly. "Otherwise you're always too worried about maintaining that gorgeous figure of yours."

She gave me an annoyed look as she set her brush down on the table and pulled off her sweatshirt, straightening her tank top.

"Why does something always have to be wrong?" she muttered, looking away from me. "Why can't everything just be okay?"

I sighed internally. If I pushed her too hard, I knew she'd instantly put up her defenses and speak to me with extreme coldness for _x _number of days, if at all.

"Sky, please don't push me away," I whispered. "I need you to talk to me."

"Right, because you always tell me everything," she said harshly, still not looking at me.

"Touché," I said softly. I walked up to the mirror and rested my head on her shoulder. I felt her relax slightly as I stroked her back. "You're my muirn beatha dan. You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," she said quietly.

"Who else can you talk to?" I asked. "If not me, who else is there?"

She turned around and smiled slightly. "My muirn beatha dan … you're so beautiful …" As she caressed my hair, I stifled a sigh of pleasure and took a small step back.

"Sky … please talk to me, don't –"

I broke off suddenly as I felt her hand slip past the waistband of my sweatpants and … oh …

My voice was barely above a whisper. "Stop that."

She pulled away quickly as if I had burned her, her eyes wide. "Sorry, I-I didn't … you don't want to?"

"I do," I said quickly. "I do, believe me, but … not like this. Not …" I sighed and made the internal decision to say what I had suspected was her problem since we had returned from Ireland. "You can't keep blaming yourself for what happened."

She stared at me. "I'm not."

"Like hell," I said firmly. "I've been watching you, I've seen you beating yourself up over this." I looked her right in the eyes, silently begging her to understand. "There was nothing you could have done."

Her eyes looked slightly watery. "If we hadn't been … if Muireadhach … if he hadn't seen us, we could have gotten her out of there."

"Sky, what happened … happened. You can't change it, and worrying about how it could have turned out is unhealthy."

"Unhealthy?" she cried, ripping herself away from me as tears leaked out of her eyes. "I look at what it did to Morgan and I feel sorry for her. I feel _sorry _for her! And then I hate myself because I think that we could have stopped this all from ever happening, and if we had, Mike would still be alive and Morgan wouldn't be acting like this! Like today? I was so happy after our hearing and then I came back here and everyone was yelling about how Morgan is distancing herself, obviously because of some inner turmoil, and then I was depressed again because, if Mike hadn't died, none of us would be hurting so much and then I think, oh, my God! Could I _be _any more selfish? Morgan just lost her brother and I'm thinking about how much the _rest_ of us are suffering? I mean, we lost a friend, but she lost _family_! She's feeling so much more pain than the rest of us and I hate myself for feeling so much when I don't have the right to be complai –"

I don't know why, but seeing Sky crying has a strange effect on me. Normally, it makes me want to kill whoever was the one to make her cry. Months ago, I had been the cause of it, and I had hated myself for that. Now, I leaned in and cut off her tearful cries in mid-word by kissing her softly.

"Shh, baby," I whispered soothingly, feeling tears threatening my eyes too. I pulled her into a tight embrace, just being there for her, holding her. "Shh … I love you … I love you …"

"Raven …" she sobbed, clinging to me so tightly that I could barely breathe. "Oh, God, Raven … please … don't leave me … never leave me …"

"I won't," I murmured. "I promise."

_I wish this could be a happy song  
__But my happiness disappeared  
__The moment you were gone  
__Tell me it's not happening  
__Say it's not as it seems  
__Tell me I'm going to wake up  
__And it's all just a bad dream_

Sky had finally calmed down enough to fall asleep. I had been planning on heading back to my dorm, but the look of vulnerability in her eyes as she asked me not to go pretty much guaranteed that I'd be spending the night. I was just holding her as she slept, resting my head on her shoulder. She looked so peaceful that all I could do was stroke her hair with a soft smile on my face. I finally realized in that moment what had been bothering her so much since we had gotten back from Europe. Mike had been taken away from Morgan without so much as a warning; one moment he was there, and the next he was gone. Sky couldn't bear the thought of that happening to anyone she loved … me, Hunter, one of our friends. To never get a chance to say goodbye … I wouldn't be able to live with that. I felt tears sting my eyes; Sky was the first person I had ever really loved in my entire life. I knew that if I lost her, I'd lose myself.

I guess I must have fallen asleep eventually because the next thing that I was aware of was movement on the bed that told me Sky had gotten up. I opened my eyes and blinked, trying to clear my vision.

"What are you doing?" I asked blearily. Sky was pulling her sweatshirt back on and pulling a pair of flip-flops out of her closet.

"I have to go."

"What? Where?"

"To the cemetery."

I did a double take. "_What_?"

"I had a dream." She sounded very distracted. "Morgan was there, and she … she was doing something she shouldn't be doing. I have to see if it was real or not."

"Well, let me come, too."

She looked at me in surprise. "No, you don't have to."

"If the alternative is letting you go alone, then yes, I'm going with you."

I could see the conflict in her eyes, but she sighed and nodded. "All right. Come on, though. We have to hurry."

_Please tell me that it's fiction  
__Tell me it's just a lie  
__Whatever you choose to tell me  
__Please say he didn't die_

I was the first one to spot something in the distance. "Is that her?"

Sky squinted into the distance as we walked quickly over the grass in the cemetery outside of town, the cold night air still and eerily quiet. The cemetery was cast in shadows from the dark clouds covering the skies. It was definitely the last place I wanted to be in the middle of the night.

"I think so …" she whispered, and we ducked behind a large gravestone carved into the shape of a medieval angel. She poked her head around the marble wings to look at the scene before us.

Morgan was clearly attempting some kind of ritual; she had candles lit around her in a circle, and she was seated in the middle, drawing power from the power sink. She was drawing symbols in the air around her with an athame and muttering something under her breath. I couldn't recognize any of the words, but I could tell it was Gaelic.

"What's she doing?" I whispered.

Her voice grew louder, echoing around the cemetery as frustration increased in her voice. I could tell that she was irritated about something; maybe the spell or whatever she was doing wasn't working. She lowered her voice with forced calm and repeated a few more verses of the ancient language, but she was losing her battle. I saw the candle that she was holding in front of her flickering, its flame growing weaker. Morgan let out a growl of frustration and set the candled own on the ground in front of her.

"Oh, no, you don't," I heard her whisper. She was holding the athame in her right hand, and she reached over with it and pricked her pointer finger on her left hand with its tip. I heard Sky give a barely audible gasp. Morgan let a drop of blood drip down onto the candle, and its flame flared up immediately. She began repeating the same verses in Gaelic that she had been saying moments before, but her voice grew angrier and more frustrated with every word. Finally, she let out a bellow of rage and flung her athame towards a gravestone in fury; it clattered into the tombstone and fell to the ground, embedding its blade in the soft earth. Morgan was still furious, and I could hear her cursing loudly under her breath.

"Come on," Sky whispered, pulling me out from behind the marble angel and heading back towards the road. "We have to get out of here."

I stared back and forth between Sky and looking over my shoulder at Morgan, still hunched over in a circle of candles; all of them had suddenly gone out. "What was she doing?"

"I recognized that chant," Sky said, sounding furious. "Hunter and I have heard it on dozens of cases. She was trying to open a bith dearc."

The term sounded unfamiliar. "A what?"

"It's a sort of portal," she said. She sighed with frustration. "I can't believe she would do this. It's a portal into other realms of existence. Specifically, the one where dead souls are. _Goddess, how could she be so stupid_?"

"Why, is it dangerous?"

"Very. Not to mention against the natural laws of death. There are just …" She looked very upset. "Witches can do a lot of things, obviously. Manipulate light and sound, create glamours, work incredible spells, but … there are certain things that no one, not even witches, should be allowed to interfere with. Morgan could hurt someone by doing this. She could hurt _herself_. It's not safe, and it's not what magick is for."

"And it doesn't take a genius to figure out who she was trying to talk to," I sighed.

Sky nodded. "Mike. I can't believe she would do this, but at the same time … it makes sense that she would want to. I know that Hunter wanted to after Linden died, but he had common sense enough to know that it would harm more than help. I suppose I assumed that she had enough common sense, as well."

"What do we do? It looked like it wasn't working. The ritual, I mean. She was really angry."

"I know. She's missing a few key steps in the process. Conjuring up a bith dearc isn't easy, and unless she gets the spell exactly right, she'll never be able to do it. We have to tell Hunter before she figures it out. … Hopefully, for Morgan's sake, she'll listen to him." Her voice lowered. "Otherwise I don't want to think about what could happen."

_And I know I promised  
__That I would try  
__But I miss you  
__And it's killing me inside_


	33. Harder to Breathe

**Disclaimer**: Here's a list of things I don't own: _Sweep_, the Maroon 5 song that the chapter's named after, and any of Cate Tiernan's characters. I don't own Iceland either, but I'm working on that ;) I mean, who wouldn't want to own Iceland? That, plus Reykjavik is just fun to say. Reykjavik, Reykjavik, Reykjavik … wow, what am I saying? Geez, I need to control this babbling impulse … anyway, here's the review thanks and the story. Review!

Taintedpromises: Yup, it was a quote from _Buffy_. I'm sorry … I just love it so much ;) I watch all of my DVDs, like, obsessively. That and _Tru Calling_. Did that ever air in the UK? It's sooo good! But then they cancelled it :growls: I was so angry … but anyway, yes, this does take place after Book 14, but it's sort of an alternate version of _Full Circle_. Just pretend that Morgan never went to Scotland. She's still in Widow's Vale.

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: I'm a sophomore too :D Sorry about you being sick. I had a horrible case of bronchitis this winter, ironically over winter break. Yeah, that sucked. Lol, but have fun in Oregon! I wish it was still our spring break (it was over, like, two weeks ago). I could so use a break right about now. My classes are killing me :( Oh, well. Have fun in Oregon and review when you get back!

Raynornlimegreen: Lol, I don't know what I would do if one of my brothers died. If I had the option to talk to them like Morgan does, I'd probably take it. They irritate me to no end right now, but I'd miss having them as punching bags if they should ever die ;) Not that I ever do things like that, of course … :silence: Lol, no, really, I love them … I guess … deep down. _Very _deep down, but nonetheless … lol, and definitely look for Hunter to have a few choice words to say to Morgan about this.

unique-deflection: Hehe, yup, Morgan is bad ;) I wonder how long that'll last. Here I am updating! Sorry it's taken so long :embarrassed silence:

**Part XXXIII**: Harder to Breathe

_How dare you say that my behavior's unacceptable?  
__So condescending, unnecessarily critical  
__I have the tendency of getting very physical  
__So watch your step  
__Because if I do, you'll need a miracle_

**Morgan**

The first thought that crossed my mind the next morning when I woke up was a memory of the previous night. I groaned and rolled over in bed, effectively tangling myself even more in my blankets, and drew the comforter over my head. Warm light was pouring in through my window, and it was time for me to be getting up. I wanted to stay in bed longer, wallowing in my frustration; I couldn't believe that, after all that, I still hadn't been able to open the bith dearc.

I knew that if Hunter knew what I was doing he would flip out. But conjuring up a bith dearc wasn't against the law or anything; it wasn't forbidden by the council. It was frowned upon, yes, but not _forbidden_. I knew that it was dangerous and risky, but considering I hadn't even gotten close to figuring out the ritual anyway, I figured it didn't really matter.

Finding the spell to open one had proved harder than I thought it would be. I had only found a few websites on the internet that even mentioned a bith dearc. Most were in passing and the few that might have had a ritual were probably laden with viruses; after my dad's threat that neither Mary K nor I would ever see living daylight again if we destroyed yet another computer system with viruses, I knew I was out of luck there. Unfortunately, a store like Practical Magick would never stock books that would tell someone how to open a portal to the other realms—it was pointedly black magick, and it wasn't as if I could ask Alyce Fernbrake, the store's manager, to special order me a book about black magick. I brushed this thought of dark magick off with uneasiness; I had to talk to Mike. That was what was important here. I wasn't hurting anyone, so there couldn't be anything wrong with it. In my head, I heard a little voice that sounded oddly like Hunter berating me for dismissing such an obvious violation of the Wiccan Rede. I just shook my head. No one was getting hurt, I repeated to myself. How could it be dangerous if no one was getting hurt?

_But I'm hurting_, I thought as I swallowed the small lump that had risen in my throat. _I'm hurting and if I can somehow do this then I won't be anymore_. The thought of not being able to talk to my brother, never being able to communicate with him at least once more, just to tell him what I was feeling about the huge weights that seemed to have settled in my chest, was too much. That couldn't happen.

With a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom to brush my hair. I would try the ritual again tonight. Maybe I wouldn't have to get it exactly right to be able to open one. Maybe the snippets of chants and incantations that I had managed to find would be enough to do it. I purposely shoved all thoughts of magick and Wicca and the bith dearc from my mind; that was one world, and it was time to get ready to face another.

One thing that was bothering me, though, was the incense that I needed. One of the websites that I had visited had said that, for many spells like opening a bith dearc, some kind of opium-based incense was best. It supposedly aided in softening the separation between dimensions and different levels of reality by doing what opium does best—acting as a hallucinogen. I had been slightly worried about this; I didn't want to get high or anything in the middle of the cemetery and collapse right there on the ground or go do something equally stupid. With a determined sigh, however, I knew that I had to get that incense. I had already looked at Practical Magick, and Alyce didn't keep anything of the sort in stock. I knew that Hunter had some at his house, though; he had confiscated a whole packet of illegal incenses and drugs from a magick raid he had gone on with some members of the New York City council squad in May. Sky was supposed to send them off to London University to be analyzed, but as far as I knew, she had forgotten what with the hustle and bustle of our trip.

Hopefully neither of them would be home if I stopped by that afternoon. I could just sneak in, take what I need, and leave without them ever knowing. I sighed; what had I gotten myself into? But I knew I had to do this. I was in too deep now, too involved in this ritual now, to stop. Already I felt a gnawing urge in me to go back to the cemetery and continue trying the spell. I just took a gulp of water to calm my racing heart and dressed for school, my mind still clouded with thoughts, worries, and questions.

_You drain me dry and make me wonder why I'm even here  
__This double vision I was seeing is finally clear  
__You want to stay but you know very well I want you gone  
__You're not fit to tread the ground that I am walking on_

I wandered over to Hunter's house after school let out. I made sure to park Das Boot a couple of houses down the street just in case one of the neighbors recognized it and told him that I had stopped by. Hoping against hope that he wasn't there, I noticed that Sky's car was gone when I approached the house from the sidewalk. That was a good sign; either she had taken it somewhere or he had borrowed it without her permission (which he did quite frequently). Casting out my senses, I realized that no one was home.

"Thank the Goddess," I whispered. I walked up to the front door and tried to open it; it was locked. I had almost unlocked it with a spell—I was working on the very last sigil—when the door suddenly flung open.

"Morgan?" Hunter was standing right in front of me.

I gaped at him, my eyes wide. "Hunter? Hi! I-I didn't know you were home." I cringed internally. Way to go, Morgan. That weird behavior won't make him at all suspicious.

He was looking at me strangely. "Why were you trying to unlock the door?"

"Because … it was locked and I didn't think you were home?" I asked meekly. "I was, um, I was looking for you."

He didn't say anything, but held the door open for me. I gave him a surprised look, but his eyes were cast down to the floor, away from me. I stepped inside after a moment and turned around in the foyer to look at him.

"So … how come I didn't sense that you were here?" I asked curiously.

"I don't know," he said breezily. "Sky left to go pick up Raven after class at the university and she and Alexis have to go to the courthouse to sign some more paperwork, so …" He shrugged. "It's just me here."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "What's wrong with you? You sound really weird." He looked at me in surprise. "I mean, you sound different. Is something wrong?"

"No," he said lightly, walking past me into the kitchen. I followed him. "No, nothing's wrong. Do you want some tea?"

I blinked at the sudden change of subject. "Um, sure." He pulled a tea kettle out of the cupboard under the stove, avoiding my eyes. As he filled the kettle with water and slammed it down on the stove, sloshing water over the burners, I stared at him. "Hunter, are you okay?"

"Yes," he said firmly again. "What do you want with that? Lemon? Sage? Black magick?"

I did a double take. "What?"

"Morgan, don't lie to me," he said, and I stared at him. His eyes, usually so warm, green, inviting, were cold and harsh. "I'm only going to ask you this once, and if the answer is no, I won't push because I don't have that right anymore." He paused and then leaned forward slightly. "Have you been trying to open a bith dearc?"

My stomach clenched and my heart skipped a beat. How did he know about-?

"What?" I whispered, my voice low.

"Have you been trying to open a bith dearc?" he repeated. "Tell me the truth."

I was set to say 'no'. I had even opened my mouth to form the word, when I suddenly stopped. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to say it. A little voice in my head was saying, _he can't do anything about it. He's not a Seeker anymore, remember? The council fired him for helping Alexis escape. Plus, opening a bith dearc isn't even against the rules. _

He took my silence for the affirmative.

"Oh, my God …"

"How did you …" I sighed, then my eyes narrowed. "Who told you?"

"Sky," he said finally. "She and Raven saw you at the cemetery last night. She described exactly the ritual needed to open a bith dearc."

I snorted. "Huh. Not exactly."

His voice was pleading. "Why, Morgan? Why would you do something so dangerous, so _stupid_?"

"I don't have to justify myself to you," I said quietly.

"No, but you owe it to me," he yelled. I flinched; he hardly ever raised his voice against me. "You owe it to all of us. Why are you doing this?"

_I don't have to listen to him_. "I don't have to listen to you. We're not dating anymore, remember? You blew that."

He grimaced, and I knew that he, as I was, was remembering that painful night at the lodge and his "no child of Ciaran's" verbal mishap.

"I realize that I'm to blame for that, Morgan, but this … there's no excuse for this." He suddenly sounded tired. "Why would you do something that goes against everything we stand for? Everything that Kithic stands for? All of its good magick? All of your mother's good magick?"

_Good magick doesn't pay_. I started suddenly. I had really just thought that, hadn't I? I froze internally. What did that mean? Good magick doesn't pay? It had come so suddenly, so quickly to my mind that I probably was a fraction of a second away from saying it out loud.

"You can't keep doing this, Morgan," Hunter was saying while pacing in front of me. "You can't begin on a road to self-destruction. That's where this will lead you."

Suddenly I was furious. "What right do you have?" I snarled. "What right do you have to pass judgment on me?"

"No," he said angrily. "I'm not trying to pass judgment on you, I'm trying to save you. This path won't take you anywhere good. All that can come of it is pain and sorrow and it's unhealthy to burden yourself with the past. I lost a brother, too, remember?"

My heart stuck in my throat. "Is that what you think this is about?" I demanded. "Mike?"

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that that's who you were trying to contact," he said, sounding pained. "Morgan, please … please don't do this. We love you, I love you, that's why we're so worried about you." He looked into my eyes intensely, and I shuddered. "I've seen what dependence on a bith dearc does to people, Morgan. It's like drugs. You can't get enough and suddenly you're falling deeper and deeper into something you can't control. It overpowers you and sucks your energy out of you."

I swallowed deeply, forcing the lump in my throat away and blinked rapidly to disperse the tears of rage in my eyes.

"It's got to be better than this," I muttered, pushing past Hunter and running out of the kitchen, into the foyer, and out of the house.

_When it gets cold outside  
__And you've got nobody to love  
__You'll understand what I mean when I say  
__There's no way we're going to give up  
__And like a little girl cries in the face  
__Of a monster that lives in her dreams  
__Is there anyone out there?  
__Because it's getting harder and harder to breathe  
__Is there anyone out there?  
__Because it's getting harder and harder to breathe_

I went to the cemetery that night as usual. On the ride over, I kept having second thoughts, but I brushed them away with an irritated groan of anger. Who did Hunter think he was? Who was he to tell me that I couldn't do what I wanted with my magick? Where did he get off criticizing me like that?

Ignoring the questions swirling around in my mind, I parked Das Boot into a space in front of a 7-Eleven about a mile down the road from the old Methodist cemetery. I shivered. It was past midnight and very still. I had managed to sneak out of the house again without Mom, Dad, or Mary K waking up, probably only because I had kept Das Boot out of the driveway and on the street. That, plus a ton of concealment runes, meant that they hadn't heard anything as I gathered my things and silently shut the front door behind me.

As I walked towards the center of the cemetery, my rucksack of spell items slung over my shoulder, I cast my senses around, feeling slightly less trustful of them. There were headstones all around me that someone could be hiding behind. I didn't feel anything, but still … an experienced witch could have blocked my senses from reaching them. If Hunter was here to try and stop me –

"Morgan."

Oh, for the love of the Goddess. I sighed and turned around to face Sky Eventide, who was standing behind me. This wasn't exactly unexpected, of course; if Hunter hadn't come, of course Sky would have.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice emotionless.

She raised her eyebrows. "Um, one, to stop you from opening a bith dearc, and two, to ask what the hell is up with you."

"I don't have to answer anything," I said calmly. I was tired of Sky and Hunter interfering in this. "And if you think that you're going to stop me –"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means get a clue, Sky. I'm not a fledgling witch anymore. I'm not that little innocent girl that ran away after Hunter interrogated David Redstone. Remember what you said to me when you chased after me in the forest, Sky? 'Don't turn this into a fight. You won't win. You may have more raw power than any witch I've ever seen, but I know how to use what I've got.' Well, now, so do I."

She didn't say anything. I pressed my advantage.

"If you want to try to stop me, that's fine. Just know that you won't be able to." I smiled derisively. "Might be better off just turning around and going straight back home." My smile disappeared. "Go back home, Sky. Go back to your stupid cousin who's too thick to see past black and white. Go back to your perfect life. You don't belong here." She couldn't know what I was feeling right then. Anger, frustration, pain, longing, and exhaustion. I was exhausted, but I still stood there.

She just looked at me. "No."

I raised my eyebrows. "No?"

"No," she repeated. "If you think I'm going to just leave you here to get your energy drawn out by black forces much bigger than you, you must be mad. You're my friend, Morgan. If you think I'd just do that –"

"You might not have a choice," I scowled. I turned around and was about to head towards the cemetery again, but she stood in front of me and blocked my way. I rolled my eyes. "Get out of my way, Sky."

She didn't move.

"You're my friend," she repeated. "I'm not just going to let you keep doing this to yourself." She glared at me. "You're already in too deep, Morgan. Don't make it worse by –"

"I said, _get out of my way_!" I screamed, and thrust my hand forward, releasing the frustration, rage, and anger that had been constantly building up inside me for days. I meant to throw witch fire at her, anything to get her out of my way. That witch was too persistent for her own good sometimes. I just meant to throw witch fire at her. I didn't expect what happened next to happen.

Something was different about the energy that poured out of my fingertips and hit Sky with an incredible force. It wasn't the familiar, crackly-blue of the witch fire that I had always seen witches use and that _I _always used, and it didn't feel like electric energy had just zapped out of my hand like my witch fire always did. It was black. It felt like liquid shooting out of me, out of my rage, and I didn't have time to cry out. I didn't have time to do anything before it crashed out of me and hit Sky dead on.

I watched in slow motion as a gravestone about twenty feet away cracked and shattered with a deafening crash as Sky slammed into it, thrust by the force of my spell.

I watched in stunned horror as her body crumpled to the ground. I heard someone scream from behind me, and suddenly Raven was at the broken headstone, crying.

_She must have come with Sky_, I thought distantly.

I approached the scene before me slowly, guardedly, not allowing myself to think or even feel. Raven was hysterical, clutching Sky's body as she sobbed.

"What did you do?" she screamed at me, her eyes wild. "What did you do to her?"

Ironically, I was wondering the very same thing. My voice was tight, and my eyes hadn't left Sky. She looked very pale suddenly as the moonlight reflected off her light skin, and her back was twisted to a strange angle. A cold feeling was beginning to spread through me like ice. "I didn't …"

"No … no …" Raven was crying. She touched Sky's head gently, and when she drew her hand away, it was red with blood. She gave a horrified cry.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed 9-1-1 with almost detached slowness. I was screaming at myself inside my head: _Why aren't you moving faster? Hurry up and call the ambulance! What the hell are you standing there for? Do something!_ Everything was moving a bit more slowly.

"We need an ambulance. There's been an accident. … The Methodist cemetery about fifteen minutes out of town. … My friend, she's hurt … There's blood. … No, not a car crash. Just … just get here. Hurry."

I cried for the first time that night in weeks. As the emergency medics pushed the stretcher holding Sky's body into the ambulance, I heard one of them talking to Raven.

"It looks pretty bad. There's … there's a chance she might not make it to the hospital."

I cried for the first time that night in weeks. As the driver called out to us, asking if we were coming because they needed to get going, and I made to step into the ambulance, Raven stopped me.

"You're not coming."

"I could heal her –" I began.

"No," she said, her voice shaking with rage, tears, and raw emotion. "No. Keep your magick away from her."

As the doors were slammed shut in my face by the driver and the ambulance disappeared into the darkness, I heard its sirens for at least five minutes afterwards. I fell to the ground on the edge of the street and cried hot tears that soaked my sweater and stung my eyes.

Raven was right. Oh, Goddess … how could I trust myself any longer?

_Does it kill?  
__Does it burn?  
__Is it painful to learn  
__That it's me that has all the control?_

I didn't sleep much that night. I lay in bed for five hours after I returned home, tossing and turning, burning up one second and freezing cold the next. My head ached and my eyes still stung with tears. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sky. Sky slamming into that gravestone, shattering it with the force of my blow. Her body falling to the ground, limp and lifeless. I saw Raven's panicked face, heard her cries and desperate Sky-please-get-up's. I heard the slamming of the ambulance doors over and over again, like an annoying alarm that won't turn off. Slam. Slam. Slam.

I pulled myself out of bed when I heard Mary K turn on the shower in our bathroom. With a sigh, I opened my closet and pulled on a red blouse and jeans. I felt guilty; should I be at the hospital right now? Sky was undoubtedly still there. Raven would have called Hunter, so he'd be there, too. Did the others know? Did Bree know? Anyone else in Kithic? Had Raven told Hunter what I had done or had she feigned ignorance?

These thoughts tormented me as I attempted to eat a Pop-Tart but couldn't; my stomach was too knotty. I forced down a glass of 7-Up to settle it, but it didn't really help. Bree had been planning on picking Mary K and I up this morning, and as I walked out of the house, surely enough, she was waiting in her red BMW, Breezy, with Robbie in the passenger seat and Alisa Soto in the back. Bree opened her door when she saw me and rushed over to the door.

"Morgan," she said, sounding slightly breathless. "There's been an accident."

I paused. The quiver in my voice wasn't intentional. "What?"

"It's Sky," she said, sounding very distraught. "I got a call from Raven this morning. Sky was in some kind of accident. She's at the hospital in Red Kill."

"We're skipping first period to visit Raven and Hunter," Alisa said. "They've been there all night. Jenna, Thalia, and the others said they'd visit during lunch. Are you going to come now with us?"

My throat felt dry. "Um, I don't know if I should … I-I mean, if _we_ should. It's kind of a family moment, you know? Very personal. They might get mad if we, you know … intrude on their grief?"

Bree shook her head. "No. We _have _to go."

"Why do we _have _to go?" I asked suspiciously.

Bree looked down, and for a moment I thought I saw tears glistening in her eyes. "Because … she's in a coma, Morgan. Sky's in a coma."

All of the sound around me seemed to stop, cease completely. All I could hear was a dull pounding in my ears. Coma … oh, no. Raven and Hunter must be devastated … and it was all because of me … all because I couldn't control my magick …

I swallowed, feeling tears come to my eyes, too. "Okay. I'll go."

_Does it thrill?  
__Does it sting  
__When you feel what I bring  
__And you wish that you had me to hold?_

"Hey."

That was all that Raven said when Bree, Robbie, Alisa, and I walked inside the hospital room where Sky was. I barely managed to stifle a gasp when I saw her lying on the bed, hooked up to too many machines to count. Her skin was pale, pale white, almost unnatural. Her face was covered in small cuts, and her left arm—the side, I realized, that she had hit the headstone with—was a light purple with bruises. Raven and Hunter were seated on either side of her bed, each holding one of her hands tightly in their own.

"How are you holding up?" Bree asked Raven gently.

Raven gave a weak smile. She looked close to tears again. "Not so good."

"Likewise," Hunter croaked out when Bree looked at him, silently asking the same question.

Raven didn't look at me; I hadn't really expected her to. I stood back, detached from the others, as Robbie, Bree, and Alisa pulled up chairs and sat with Raven and Hunter around the bed. I looked around me at the weird machines that Sky now depended on for her life. The heart monitor's consistent beeping, though somewhat lower than what would be optimal, was little consolation.

"Who did this?" Alisa whispered, her voice shaking as she raised her head to look at Hunter. "What inhumane, evil person did this?"

My heart was thumping so loud that I was sure they must be able to hear it. I chanced a glance at Raven, trying to look as discreet as possible. She didn't look at me.

"I don't know," she whispered, not looking Alisa in the eye. "I woke up around two-thirty and she had left a note saying she was going to the cemetery." Her voice broke, and when she spoke again, I thought I sensed a trace of silent fury in her words. "She thought –" She stopped suddenly, and I thought with a sickening feeling in my stomach how confusing this must be to Bree, Robbie, and Alisa. They didn't know that I had been trying to open a bith dearc. Only Raven and Sky, the witnesses, and Hunter had known.

Hunter … oh, Goddess. He wasn't stupid. He would make the connection. He'd make the connection between me, the cemetery, and Sky going there in the middle of the night.

"Have you –" I started to say before breaking off. I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence. Or look at Hunter and Raven.

Bree misconstrued my silence for extreme grief—only partially untrue—and finished my sentence. "Have you talked to a doctor recently?"

"About an hour ago," was all that Hunter said. I noticed with slight relief when I glanced at him that he hadn't been looking at me.

"How's she taking it?" Bree whispered, and I looked over behind Raven in surprise, not having realized Alexis was there. She was asleep in her wheelchair, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Hunter sighed.

"She's been through too much these last few days. This was just … the extreme. She's not doing well, I don't think. She cried herself to sleep around three."

"Mr. Niall?" A brunette, middle-aged nurse had poked her head through the door. Hunter looked up.

"Yes?"

The nurse looked at us newcomers for a moment before stepping inside the room and closing the door behind her. "I, um, I have the results of the neurological tests we performed on your cousin." She looked uneasily at Bree, Robbie, Alisa, and I. "Um, I can go over them in private with you if you'd like …"

"No," Hunter said firmly. "Anything you'd say to me, you can say to them."

The nurse looked uncomfortable. "Mr. Niall, wouldn't you prefer –"

"Anything you'd say to me, you can say to them," Hunter said, his voice much harsher than it had been a moment ago.

With a sigh, the nurse opened a file that she was holding and scanned through a couple of sheets of paper. "Um … Mr. Niall, first, I must ask, has she been injured recently? A fatal injury?"

Hunter looked down for a moment, clearly fighting tears, before nodding slightly. I swallowed heavily; she _had _been fatally injured recently. Muireadhach had thrown her and Hunter into a mausoleum wall. They had recovered for the most part, but … she must have still been healing …

"Well, the results show sustained nerve damage to the spinal cord and possible … possible brain damage." She bit her lip. "Overall, it's … not very encouraging. I'm sorry, Mr. Niall, but there's about an 85 chance that she'll never wake up."

_When it gets cold outside  
__And you've got nobody to love  
__You'll understand what I mean when I say  
__There's no way we're going to give up  
__And like a little girl cries in the face  
__Of a monster that lives in her dreams  
__Is there anyone out there?  
__Because it's getting harder and harder to breathe  
__Is there anyone out there?  
__Because it's getting harder and harder to breathe  
_  
"Raven, I'm sorry, I –"

"No." She was trying not to yell, and I could tell that the part of her telling her to stay calm—probably a much smaller part than the one that was telling her to violently beat me to death—was losing its battle.

Now she was yelling. "No. Don't tell me that you're sorry! You knew full well what you were doing!" Her voice trembled with fury and anger; I knew that I was witnessing the complete Raven Meltzer breakdown. "If your goal is to put the rest of us in comas just so you can talk to your dead brother, at least give us fair warning beforehand." The look in her eyes was pure, seething rage. "Now get out because I _swear_, witch or not, if you are not out of my sight in the next ten seconds, I will make you very sorry that you came here."

I didn't doubt even a little bit that, even with my magickal powers, Raven could still kick my ass if she really wanted to. And I could tell that she _really_ wanted to.

She disappeared back inside the hospital room, and I was left standing out in the hallway by myself. I felt tears threaten my eyes as I put a tiny invisibility spell on myself and peered in through the window. Alisa was crying, and Bree was shaking in Robbie's arms. Hunter was staring fixedly at the floor, but I could see tears in his eyes. He looked up when Raven walked back in and stood up. He hugged her, and she started crying into his shoulder. Like her heart was breaking.

I swallowed the huge lump forming in my throat and turned away, walking back down the hall slowly alone.

_Is there anyone out there?  
__Because it's getting harder and harder to breathe_


	34. Farewell to the Old Me

**Disclaimer**: Okay, here's Part 34! Wahoo! Okay, guys, I know this is going to be a shock, but … (tense silence) this is the second to last chapter! Aah! The next chapter is … (sob) the last one! And then this story is going to be over. Wow. I still can't really grasp that concept, but … hmm. It's definitely been an interesting time writing this. I'll save the mushy stuff for the last chapter, so anyway, the song belongs to Anna Nalick. Um, yeah. That's pretty much it. As always, **review** when you're done!

Taintedpromises: Geez, what would I do without my most loyal reviewer? I honestly don't know. I agree that it stinks that Tru Calling was cancelled, but then the people at FOX aren't very smart. By the way, I never got that e-mail that you said you sent me. My e-mail is really random and sometimes blocks messages that it's not supposed to. Could you send it again? Pleeeease? Lol, well, I'd better get to the others, but thank you for constantly being there and reviewing my story! Me wuvs you :D

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Welcome back … um … a long time ago. But anyway, hope you had fun in Oregon. I went there a few summers ago and I had a great time b/c it was sooo nice in the summer. Here's your update! Read my next story when I post it, okay? Promise? ;) Lol, review again and tell me what you think!

unique-deflection: Thanks for the review! Sky is one of my favorite characters too … she seems to suffer a lot, doesn't she? Oh, well. Comes with the job, I guess. Review when you finish :P

Jenal: Thanks for your reviews on the parodies and this story! I love getting reviews from people (can't you tell?) so keep 'em coming!

**Part XXXIV**: Farewell to the Old Me

_2 a.m. and she calls me  
__Because I'm still awake  
__Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?  
__I don't love him and winter just wasn't my season  
__We walk through the doors  
__So accusing their eyes  
__Like they have any right at all to criticize  
__Hypocrites  
__You're all here for the very same reason_

I realized after I had entered the hospital parking lot that I hadn't driven Das Boot here; Bree had brought me to the hospital, and she was still in the hospital room with the others. Judging by the states that Hunter and Raven were in, I was pretty sure that she, Robbie, and Alisa would be staying for a while to offer emotional support.

"Morgan?" Bree's voice startled me, and I turned around to look at her, surprised.

"Hey," I said. "I thought you'd be staying in there."

She nodded. "I'm going to. None of us are really in the school mood right now." She sounded so tired. "Robbie and Alisa want to stay, and I wanted to ask you, too."

I bit my lip. It was a lot to ask, but I couldn't stay there any longer. Already I felt like a huge weight of horrible guilt was pressing on my chest, constricting my breathing; my eyes stung from the salt of my tears, and I was sure my hair was a mess. "Actually, if it's not too much trouble …"

"Could I take you home?" Bree asked wryly, a small smile on her lips. "Sure. Will your parents flip out?"

"No, they'll have left for work already." I sighed, running an anxious hand through my hair. "I just … I can't stay here. I can't explain it, but I just feel like … being here … I'm doing more harm than good."

Bree pursed her lips. "Are you sure? I mean, I'm sure having you there would really help Hunter and –"

I cut her off before she could say Raven's name. "Bree, please. If you don't want to take me home, I'll get a taxi or something."

"No, I'll take you," she said after a moment. I could see the conflict in her dark eyes. "Are you sure?"

I didn't answer her, already walking towards her BMW, my mind whirling with thoughts. What was I going to do when I got home? The house would be abandoned, that's for sure. I was facing the possibility of having an entire day to do nothing but wallow in my own guilt when an idea struck me. I paused—literally. I stopped in my tracks and Bree walked past me, asking, "Well, aren't you coming?"

I nodded slightly and followed her, but my mind was already working on the details. My parents wouldn't be home, so there was no chance of getting caught. It wasn't dangerous. I had done it dozens of other times. Well, maybe not dozens, but at least enough to know what I was doing. Scrying was simple. It wasn't dangerous like trying to open up a bith dearc, which I knew could go wrong at any time. It wasn't like shooting witch fire at someone, which was intended to hurt them in any case.

These thoughts, reassurances, and worries occupied my mind until Bree pulled back into the driveway at 35 Copperknoll Place. I noted that my parents' cars were not in the driveway and glanced at my watch. It was 8:35. School had started half an hour ago, so Mary K must be gone, too. I didn't say anything to Bree when I got out of the car, not even thanking her for bringing me home. She didn't say anything, just backed out of the driveway silently and drove off back down the street in the direction we had just come. I stood on the front porch for a long time, just breathing.

The house was warm with morning sun shining through the windows. It was a beautiful day outside, but I couldn't shake the feeling of gloom inside me. I trudged up the stairs and kicked my shoes off on the landing. After collecting my supplies—five candles and a few matches, to be exact—I dropped them on the floor and sighed deeply. I arranged the candles in a circle around me and used the matches to light them; I was going to need all of my strength for what I was about to attempt.

As I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a circle of candles, I forced any thoughts of Sky, Hunter, Raven, Bree, anyone out of my mind. I focused on my breathing. In, out. In, out. Just breathe. I was overcome by a feeling of peace as I sank deeper and deeper into a calm meditation. The knots inside my chest seemed to be loosening, and I could visualize them unwinding and disappearing. I felt the incredible feeling of just being—not sitting on the ground, not feeling anything, just lost inside myself. I breathed deeply, imagining clean white light pouring into me with every breath and the black light burdening me seeping out with every exhale. I was at one with myself and my surroundings, which had fallen away without so much as a sound. Still feeling light-headed and separated from my body, I opened my eyes and looked into the flame of the candle I held in my hands.

_I need to know_, I whispered in my mind, a grim determination filling me. _I need to see. _

_Are you sure you're ready?_ a small voice asked in my ear.

I didn't need to give an answer. I wasn't sitting in my room anymore, my familiar room in my familiar house in the all-too-familiar Widow's Vale. I didn't know where I was going; I kept my eyes wrenched tightly shut, but I could feel the ground shifting and quaking before me. I shivered suddenly and violently as my stomach gave a lurch. It was very cold suddenly; I opened my eyes just a slit, and all I saw was a whirl of color, blacks and whites and reds and greens and blues. It was as if I were speeding at about five million miles per hour down the road and everything in front of me was just a motion blur. I shut my eyes quickly as I fell deeper into the mass of color and blurry sound

_Oh, Goddess_, I thought, my mind racing. _Oh, Goddess_. Nothing like this had ever happened to me.

And suddenly I was gone. The ground below me was still and solid, and my eyes snapped open immediately. My breathing was coming in harsh, shallow gasps, and my stomach felt queasy with what had just happened. I stifled a mix between a gasp and a cry when my mind managed to register what I was seeing in front of me.

I was sitting on a sidewalk next to a street, in the same position I had been sitting in back in my room. I looked around me in fearful apprehension, my heart racing; the night surrounding me was silent, and when I looked up at the starless, cloudy sky, I realized that it was so cold because it was snowing. Small flakes of white were slowly falling from the deep black sky, and I caught a small one in my hand. I shivered as it melted into a cold droplet of water on my palm. I stood on shaky legs, slowly taking in more of my immediate surroundings. Where was I?

Then, though, I began to notice things. The street looked oddly familiar, in its curvature and the way it disappeared around the corner of a red brick building. Squinting, I read the sign hanging in front of the nearest building's door. Its worn and weathered wood read _Gottfried's Meats_. I twisted my head around to look at the other side of the street, shaking off the thin layer of cold snow that had collected on my shoulders. The sign in the dusty, grimy window of a small shop read _Widow's Vale Pharmacy_. I gasped and looked around at my surroundings with new horror. Oh, Goddess. I was in Widow's Vale.

But where was everyone? Main Street had never been this empty before. I didn't hear the sounds of any cars approaching, no one was on the sidewalks, and all of the lights in the shops and the apartments above the shops were dark. The only source of light was the moon, full and shining over my head, its light dancing in odd and mesmerizing patterns through the bare branches of the trees lining the sidewalk and the falling snow around me.

I was truly on the verge of panicking. The street was so empty, and I didn't sense any other life forms around me. There was just … nothing. I couldn't feel anything around me, and I shivered violently, the cold beginning to pierce my skin through the thin top I was wearing.

I turned around, not because I sensed something, but because I wanted to see if Double Dave's, my favorite pizza joint, was still next to the bank. When my brown eyes met steel gray—the steel gray of someone very familiar—I couldn't do anything but stare.

"Father …" I whispered.

_Because you can't jump the track  
__We're like cars on a cable  
__And life's like an hour glass glued to the table  
__No one can find the rewind button, girl  
__So just cradle your head in your hands  
__And breathe  
__Just breathe  
__Breathe  
__Just breathe_

I never could have imagined the rush of emotions that surged through me in that instant that seemed to last forever. My father, Ciaran MacEwan, had lost his powers months ago, and I hadn't seen him since that fateful night when Killian had taken his limp body away. Now, he was standing before me, his dark hair peppered with snow and a light layer of snowflakes covering his long black coat. He looked at me calmly, judging my reaction to seeing him for the first time in weeks. I blinked as a strange longing filled me; I couldn't explain it, but … something in me wanted to just run to him and hug him, hug my real father and know, just once, what it would feel like if he had been in my life all along. I had actually taken a step forward before I stopped. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words could come.

"Father," I whispered brokenly again, my voice strained. "I'm so confused." I swallowed the tears I felt rising and forced down the huge lump in my throat.

He nodded, and I reached out my hand to touch his arm. Where I should have felt the wool of his coat I felt nothing. Just air. I gave a small, bitter laugh. So much for a simple father-daughter hug.

"I don't know where I am," I murmured. "Or, well, I do, but I don't know why."

"Isn't that what you're here to find out?" he asked, and I smiled slightly at hearing his voice again after so long. Funny that I would have missed it after never having heard it in my life before last year.

I nodded. "I suppose so." I paused and looked around at the empty street. "So … where do we start? I mean, you know that, right? You're, like, my guide, aren't you?"

Ciaran looked at me curiously and shrugged. "Pick and choose. This will end the same in any case." There was a funny twinkle in his eyes. "And yes, I suppose one could call me that."

I sighed. "You couldn't be more cryptic? All right, all right."

Five minutes later—at least, it seemed like five minutes, I'm not too accustomed to how time travels in astral realms—found Ciaran and I in the middle of an abandoned grocery store. I tugged on the light string, but the fluorescent lights on the ceiling didn't flicker on; this place must have been empty for ages. It was completely deserted and quite a sight to behold in the dark of the night. Food was spilled on the floor and lying haphazardly on the floor, and there was a distinct smell of rotting fruit coming from the organic section near the back. The cash register was broken, its tray lying on the floor behind the counter, and the floor was covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, picking up a bag of blue corn chips and setting it back down with disinterest.

"Just wait and see," was Ciaran's vague reply. All was silent in the shop for a moment, but I jumped a foot in the air when I heard a noise coming from the back of the store. A figure was shuffling around in the darkness, and I jumped when the figure moved into the moonlight reflecting from the door.

"Robbie?" I gasped.

He was dressed in a worn sweatshirt and jeans, and he looked different. Older, somehow. His face was unshaven and his eyes seemed empty as he walked around the aisles of the shop, grabbing random food items off the shelves and stuffing them into a large plastic trash bag. I watched in stunned silence as bags of tortillas, peanut butter jars, loaves of bread, and bottles of juice disappeared inside his bag.

"Robbie?" I asked again, my voice slightly stronger. He didn't look towards me or even give any indication that he had heard me.

"Oh, he can't hear you," Ciaran said simply. "Can't see us, either."

I looked at him curiously. "Is this like in _A Christmas Carol _where no one can see Scrooge and the ghosts?"

Ciaran laughed bitterly. "We're not ghosts, Morgan." He paused and amended his sentence. "Or, well, I am, but you're not. You're just a shadow in this world."

I blinked, my brain still unable to wrap itself around what was going on. "Where am I?" I asked again.

Ciaran smiled simply, his white teeth bright against the inky blackness of the store around us. "You'll figure it out eventually." I started and looked towards the door as the dinging of a small bell above the door announced that Robbie had left. Ciaran looked towards the door as well. "But, until you do, we should follow him."

_May he turned 21 on the base of Fort Bliss  
__Just today he sat down to the flask in his fist  
__Hasn't been sober since maybe October of last year  
__Here in town you can tell he's been down for a while  
__But, my God, it's so beautiful when the boy smiles  
__I want to hold him but maybe I'll just sing about it_

As Ciaran and I walked a few yards behind Robbie, who was lugging the bag of food over his shoulder, down the deserted street, I shuddered. The snow was falling lightly, and the sky had grown darker. I looked around, the scenery around me dark and forbidding. There was literally no sign of life, no footprints in the snow except those of Robbie. It was so silent that I'd swear I could hear the snowflakes gently floating to the ground.

"Where is everyone?" I whispered, almost afraid to disturb the stillness of the scene in front of me.

Ciaran shrugged. "Gone. Dead. Depends who you're talking about."

I gaped at him. Widow's Vale was a small town, yes, but it wasn't as if it only had a few hundred people.

"What could have possibly happened that could empty a town like this?" I asked.

"I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yet," my father said, still looking ahead at Robbie.

I didn't say anything for a moment, just thinking. "Well, wait … if Robbie is here … where are the others? Where's Bree? Where's Hunter?"

Ciaran paused as Robbie disappeared through the creaky door of a toy store. I shivered upon seeing the grotesque clown dolls adorning the front window display. Their bright, freakishly happy faces seemed so out of place that it was inappropriate. "I think we're about to find out."

I watched him for a moment as he held the door open for me and, with a deep breath, nodded and stepped through the doorway.

_Because you can't jump the track  
__We're like cars on a cable  
__And life's like an hourglass glued to the table  
__No one can find the rewind button, boys  
__So cradle your head in your hands  
__And breathe  
__Just breathe  
__Breathe  
__Just breathe_

The basement of the toy shop was cold, maybe colder than it was outside, and it seemed damp and dingy with only one lone light hanging from the ceiling. I looked around me in surprise as Ciaran and I descended the stairs after Robbie, our feet not echoing as his did. A rickety wooden table stood near the far wall, a few chairs grouped haphazardly around it. Two small twin beds sat in the corners of the room, uncomfortable-looking woolen blankets atop them. As Robbie unloaded the food from his garbage bag onto the table to his small audience, I stared in horror.

Bree looked so different. Her long brown hair had lost its gorgeous sheen, and it hung just past her shoulders, no longer as shiny and sleek as it had once been. Her eyes seemed sadder, somehow, and she looked so much older. Sky's hair was still as light blonde as it had ever been, but her dark eyes confirmed the passage of time that had taken place. They held a new kind of sorrow, something I hadn't seen in them before. Raven looked somewhat still the same, except her hair was a little shorter and she, like all the others, looked thinner. There was something about looking at all of them … my friends as they would be in the future … that saddened me. They seemed so different … so unlike the people I had once known.

"Okay, ladies and … um … ladies," Robbie said with a sigh, setting a can of tomato juice on the table and naming each subsequent item as he lifted it out of the bag. "We've got juice, peanut butter, tortillas, wheat bread, regular bread, um … date bread, pickles, mustard, ketchup, Spaghetti-O's, and about forty cans of soup."

The others looked at him incredulously.

"Um, okay … just as a question," Bree began, "did you actually look at what you were picking up?"

Robbie looked exasperated. "Well, you know, you could have come with me. It's dangerous enough wandering those streets. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could."

"We're not complaining," Sky said.

Bree snorted. "Well, sure, we're not _now_. But when it comes time to fix up a peanut butter, pickles, mustard, ketchup, and wheat bread sandwich –"

Sky looked dangerously at her. "We're not complaining."

"We're not complaining," Bree whispered meekly.

"We just have to tough this out for a few more days," Sky said with a sigh. "Then … it'll be time, and hopefully after that things can go back to normal."

Suddenly I was finding it difficult to breathe. I gasped and choked for air, but my lungs couldn't seem to come up with the oxygen they needed. My friends didn't say anything; they couldn't see me or hear me. I was a ghost in this world.

"Goddess …" I gasped, doubling over and clutching my stomach. I felt like I was going to be sick. I had to get out of there. Ciaran followed me, calling my name as I ran back up the stairs to the main level of the shop, knocked over a display of Malibu Barbies, and barreled through the door of the shop, that irritating dinging of the bell ringing in my ears.

_There's a light at the end of this tunnel  
__You shout because you're just as far in  
__As you'll ever be out  
__And these mistakes you've made  
__You'll just make them again  
__If you'll only try turning around_

When I ran out of the shop, I sank down to my knees on the snow-covered sidewalk, trying to ground myself to no avail. I still felt sick, lightheaded, and overly confused. When I saw Ciaran emerge out of the shop behind me, I whirled around and glared at him.

"Take me out of here! I don't want to see anymore!"

"You don't have a choice," he said firmly. "You chose to come here, and now you've got to witness what this world has to show you."

"It was me they were talking about," I whispered. "Wasn't it? I'm the one who's done this to Widow's Vale. I … I destroyed it."

Ciaran laughed emotionlessly. "Not quite. You haven't destroyed it yet. Not completely. But, you know, it is rather amusing."

"What, amusing that I've completely ruined my friends' lives?" I screamed.

"No, amusing that … ever since you found out I was your father, you've lived your life in fear." He stepped closer to me. "Fear that you'll turn out just like me." He paused and suddenly looked nostalgic. "Never mind the fact that your mother was one of the greatest white witches that the world has ever seen. Never mind the fact that her coven hadn't practiced dark magick for decades." I bit my lip and didn't say anything. "No, because you had a father like me, you were automatically evil."

"No," I whispered.

"No?" he repeated incredulously. "But that's what you think, isn't it? I suppose we do have our similarities, after all, looking at this future. Meaning, of course, that we both killed our muirn beatha dans.

My mouth went dry and the world seemed very quiet suddenly. "What?" I managed to choke out. "What are you-" Then the horrible realization hit me. Oh, Goddess … this was the world. This was the world where I was truly evil, where I had given into my dark legacy, wholly and completely. "What did I do?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Your last true link to humanity," Ciaran said with a sigh. "He came to you unarmed, bound his own powers, and asked you to either listen to him or kill him."

I couldn't breathe.

"You chose the latter."

To stop the sob erupting out of me that I felt rising in my throat, I bit my lip so hard that I could taste blood on my tongue.

"Oh, my God …" I whispered, my heart physically hurting.

Ciaran continued, nonplussed. To him, this was truth. This was fact. To me, this was the end. "You had let go of everything, everything that once meant something to you. Anyone with a connection to your past, your friends, your family … they all had to go. They stood between you and your ultimate goal. What was that?"

I knew the answer to that innately. "To not hurt anymore."

He just nodded simply. I stared into space, unable to focus my gaze on one thing when my mind was racing millions of miles per hour and my heart felt like it had literally been torn apart. After just sitting there for a while, just breathing, just trying not to have a complete mental and emotional breakdown, I looked up at Ciaran, who was sitting patiently beside me.

"Show me," I whispered.

_2 a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song  
__If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me  
__Threatening the life it belongs to  
__And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd  
__Because these words are my diary screaming out loud  
__And I know that you'll use them however you want to_

The gravestone was simple, just a marble headstone set into the soft earth at the cemetery by the Episcopalian church on West Old Sterling Road. The lettering was simple, free from deceptions or fancy swirls. Simple but somehow sad. A lot like he had been.

**HUNTER NIALL  
****1985 – 2007**

That was all it said. Simple. Sad. I bit my lip as I stared at the cold words engraved into the black marble. Something about them seemed so unreal. Was Hunter really buried right underneath where I was standing, underneath the tombstone that bore his name? It seemed surreal, to say the least. The snow was swirling around in the sky, but there, just standing there, it seemed very quiet.

I heard the quiet sounds of someone walking through the gathering snow and looked to my right to see Sky standing next to me, looking at the tombstone as well. It would have been very strange to see. Ciaran, me, and Sky just standing in front of a tombstone, all of us staring at it as if wondering if it would get up and start dancing. Sky couldn't see us, of course. To her, she was the only person in the world at that moment. She touched the top of the tombstone with her hand gently, shivering slightly as a gust of cold wind blew around us.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and suddenly I felt very uncomfortable. It wasn't our place to be here, Ciaran and me. We shouldn't be listening to Sky's quiet ruminations at her cousin and best friend's grave. "I'm sorry we couldn't stop her before it came to this." Her voice broke slightly, and I looked down, tears threatening my eyes. Her voice tightened slightly. "But we'll stop her. I promise. One way or another." She sighed. "Wilson and the others are coming down from New York City. They should be here soon." She looked down at her hands. "We're going to try to strip her of her powers before she can hurt anyone else."

I bit my lip and swallowed the lump rising in my throat.

"It's not about vengeance, if you're wondering," she said with a small smile. "I know you wouldn't approve of that. It's just … I keep wondering how many other Skys there are out there with Hunters they love. And I'm not going to let her take _their _Hunters away." She gave a weak, embarrassed smile as she traced the letters on the tombstone. "Goddess, listen to me, I'm getting so emotional. I just …" She broke off as a tear slid down her cheek. "Goddess, I miss you. I don't know how we can survive without you, Giomanach. I don't know how I've survived these last five weeks."

A pause.

"But it's almost over," she sighed. "And then … I don't know, maybe life will go on." She paused as she stood again. "And then you'll be able to see her again. Who knows? Maybe she's sorry for everything she's done and you guys can be together again."

I'm not sure how long I stood there with Ciaran by my side, just replaying Sky's one-sided conversation with her dead cousin in my head. The sorrow in her voice had taken on a whole new dimension when I heard it in my head, and my heart ached for her and the others with a kind of pain that I had never felt before. I knew what made it hurt so much, though. Guilt.

I looked back towards the main town as night began to fall outside. The moon had risen and light was bouncing off the fallen snow in the cemetery, creating a beautiful and haunting painting before my eyes. I wanted to just collapse in the snow and stare up into the cloudy, dark sky forever, just being. But I looked at Ciaran with a question in my eyes.

_It's almost time, isn't it? For them to go to me and try to … ?_

He nodded and gave me a verbal answer. "Yes."

I nodded, bracing myself. "Well, then, let's go."

_But you can't jump the track  
__We're like cars on a cable  
__And life's like an hourglass  
__Glued to the table  
__No one can find the rewind button now  
__Sing it if you understand  
__  
So breathe  
__Just breathe  
__Just breath_


	35. The One Who Knows

**Disclaimer**: I'm not going to waste time with a disclaimer, so: I don't own _Sweep_. If you decide to sue me, it'll be your own stupid fault because I distinctly said that I don't own it ;)

Taintedpromises: Lol, I definitely take a long time to finish a story. I swear, I'm the biggest procrastinator that I know. It's like a disease. And of course you're on my favorites list! You're, like, my best reviewer and I love your stories :D I can't wait for you to update "All Because of You". I remember how much I liked it when I was reading it. Thank you for always reviewing this story. Doesn't seem like a lot to say considering you've reviewed, like, every single chapter, but I would always look forward to your reviews the most and they meant a lot :)

unique-deflection: That was your favorite chapter? Coolies! Lol, I love it when people tell me what their favorite chapter is. It gives me hints as to how improve the story. Yeah, Hunter gone in this reality … freaky, huh? Should be interesting to see the effect that it has on Morgan. Hmm … about Alisa … wow, I didn't even factor her into the story when I was planning it all out. I honestly have no idea where she is :embarrassed silence: Okay, okay, leave me alone! Lol, I don't know, maybe she ran off somewhere when Morgan started going all creepy-evil-like. Who knows? Imagine something :P

Raynornlimegreen: Of course we all know that Morgan is a good person … she's just having a little bit of trouble accepting that as of now ;) But, yeah … in this reality, she killed Hunter. Shocking, huh? Like Ciaran said, any link to her past had to go … hmm, now I'm depressed. Anyhoo, read and review! Pleeeease? You're another of my favorite authors b/c not only are your stories awesome, but you always review mine :D

High Low: Thanks for your reviews! To answer your question, I usually get the song lyrics from any random artist as long as the lyrics fit the chapter that I'm writing. Like, for this chapter, example, the song has to be kind of melancholy but the lyrics definitely make sense for what happens at the very end. If you want to listen to the music, find Dar Williams' official website at Google and load the flash player. The song is "The One Who Knows". I think the website is darwilliams dot com (the site doesn't let me upload addresses, so you can figure it out).

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Lol, I'd definitely have to agree that this story has been quite a ride … and that's coming from the person who wrote it! Imagine how much of a ride it was for me! Although, I have to say, there's no way I would have ever finished the story the whole way through if I didn't have amazing reviewers like you (I sound like a PBS commercial, don't I? Oh, well). I loved reading your "random true story", too ;) There are just always going to be people like that out there. I know a lot of them myself, and they're really annoying, but there's not really anything we can do. Other than ignore them, that is. Just tell the guy to bug off and hopefully he'll listen. Okay, well, I've babbled on long enough. Just wanted to (finally!) say thank you for reviewing so many times. I love my reviewers more than my own family (lol, okay, maybe not, but I do love you guys!) so stick around for future stories, okay? Please:big smile:

VKC: Welcome back :P Lol, glad to see you're still enjoying the story! Glad you're feeling better (I hate it whenever I get sick … because when I do I get _really_ sick) but thanks for coming back!

Buffyrox16: Thank you! Have you read the chapters past thirty yet? That's where it gets really interesting ;)

Heather: I would love to have a career in writing, but I don't know. I've read a ton of stories where the author is much better than me, so who knows? Competition appears pretty tough ;) But I do love reading and writing, so I might consider majoring in humanities in college. When I publish my book, I'll be sure to let everyone at fanfiction dot net know (again, sorry about the typed out web address. This server is really weird about things like that).

Okay, here's one quick thing before we actually get to the story: I've decided to give you guys a more detailed summary of the story that I'll start writing now that BTTB is finished. It's about Hunter and Sky when they're growing up in England … just in case you haven't heard me say that at some point or another. Here you go!

_Hunter Niall is the youngest and most promising Seeker to ever join the International Council of Witches. His cousin and best friend, Sky Eventide, is beautiful, smart, and popular with a wide circle of friends. Both are witches with strong bloodlines and powerful lineages._

_On the outside, their lives appear perfect, but Hunter and Sky can feel their world slowly collapsing around them. Sky constantly struggles to uphold her family's tradition of knowledge and excellence under the critical eye of her mother. However, when a foolish mistake threatens to destroy her relationships with her lover and her friends, she delves into a depression that will risk her future. _

_For Hunter, life is not any better; his obsession with fighting dark magick has almost ruined his personal life. As if that were not bad enough, the stress of being a Seeker constantly forces him to compromise his schoolwork in order to keep up with his training. As he strains to improve his relationships to his guardians, his family, and his girlfriend, soon it becomes clear that he must make a choice: his job — or his life._

Without further ado, I present the final chapter of Back to the Beginning! For how much I've been hyping it, hopefully it's good …

**Part XXXIV**: The One Who Knows

_Time there was I had a dream  
__You're the dream come true  
__And if I had the world to give  
__I'd give it all to you_

**Bree**

"Any change?" I asked as Alisa and I walked back into the hospital room, carrying sodas and a bag of Krispy Kreme donuts. Hunter just gave me a dangerous look as he stood up from his hard-backed chair, stretching his muscles. Alisa looked at me cautiously.

"Um, Bree, I know that it'd be best if we stayed here, but I have AP Human Geography next period and I can't really afford to miss the third day."

I nodded. "Yeah." I looked at Hunter. "Hunter, you know we'd stay if we could –"

He shook his head. "No, I understand. You can't put your lives on hold because …" He paused. "You should all get back to school. There's nothing you can do now."

Robbie nodded with a sigh and looked at Raven, who was still sitting by Sky's bed, holding her hand tightly. "Raven? Didn't you say you had a lecture or something at Reagan Hall at eleven?"

Raven looked up at him quickly before looking back at Sky. "But I …" Her voice was very small. "I don't want to leave her."

"Raven, there's nothing we can do now," Hunter said quietly. "Go to your classes. Leave your cell phone on. I'll call if there's any change, I promise."

After a moment, Raven nodded slowly, still looking somewhat detached from the rest of the world.

"Come on. I'll give you a ride," I said to her softly.

After a last forlorn look towards Sky's motionless form, she followed Alisa and Robbie out of the room. I looked at Hunter, who was staring off into space with a distant look in his eyes. I rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.

"Are you going to be okay here by yourself?" I asked, my eyes wandering from his tear-streaked, exhausted face to Sky, pale and still on the bed, her chest rising and falling weakly.

"Yes," he said absently. I scrutinized him closer. "Yes, I will," he added. "Go back to school." He gave a wry smile. "Sky would be going mad if she knew that you lot were skipping classes on her account."

I couldn't help but grin at that. "All right." I turned my stern face on. "But if you need anything or if something happens, you call. Robbie and I will have our cell phones on all day."

He nodded and looked back towards Sky, not saying any more. I took that as my cue to leave, but I didn't go before clasping Sky's cold hand in my own. "Come on, Sky. You've got to pull through this. I mean, what would the rest of us do without you to boss us around?"

_I'll take you to the mountains  
__I will take you to the sea  
__I'll show you how this life became  
__A miracle to me_

**Morgan**

It was a strange sentence, I had to admit it, but I had to ask it. "So do you know where I am?"

Ciaran's eyes fixated on me, and I looked curiously back at him. "Excuse me?"

"Do you know where I am?" I repeated. "I mean, in this world? Where is this going to be? Where's the other me?"

My father looked around the street that we were walking down, an alley that would lead back to Widow's Vale's main street. I shivered and brushed a bit of snow off my arm, amazed by just how still and quiet the streets of Widow's Vale were. There were no lights in the buildings around us, none even in a building that I recognized as an apartment complex. It looked as if the whole city were dead.

Oh, Goddess. I mentally chastised myself. If that were true, I didn't want to know it.

As we approached the main street again, we turned the corner by the toy shop to see the swish of someone's coat disappear through the door to the shop, the bell dinging and silencing once more as the door shut. I narrowed my eyes, squinting through the falling snow as I hurried up to the toy shop and pulled the door open once again, Ciaran right behind me. I could hear the footsteps of whoever had just entered the shop tracking down the stairs to the basement. It sounded like there was more than just one pair of feet.

As I descended down the stairs, my feet not echoing on the creaky wooden stairs as the previous intruders' had, I blinked rapidly to adjust my eyes to the dimmed light. In the basement, more people were gathered than had been there before. Robbie, Bree, and Raven were sitting around the table looking towards Sky, who was talking to four people, the ones we had just seen enter the shop. All four were wearing thick black coats and two of them, men, had snow caps pulled low over their ears. One of them pulled the cap off, shaking the snow to the ground, as he addressed Sky.

"You're sure this is the best way to proceed?" he asked in a gruff Scottish accent.

"We have no choice," Sky said simply. "It's too dangerous to allow Morgan to have her powers anymore." Her eyes hardened. "You already agreed, Wilson! You said that you would help us."

"Aye, and I will," he said firmly. "I just want to be sure we're doing the right thing here. This girl, this Morgan … she's killed people? How many?"

"Too many," was all that Sky said.

"I've seen the stories," said a woman standing beside Wilson. "Death by asphyxiation, torture … and many, many unsolved disappearances. This girl, she's too powerful and too dangerous."

"She didn't used to be like that," Bree said, her voice tight.

"Doesn't matter," said the second man. "For some witches, once you cross the line between white and black magick, you can't come back. And some people just have a predisposition to evil."

"Stop!" Bree yelled, her voice suddenly much louder as she shoved her chair aside and stood up, staring the man in the face. "You don't know what's going on with her! You don't –"

"Bree," Sky said warningly in a tone that left no room for compromise. "We've gone over this. There's no alternative."

Bree didn't say anything. Sky looked at the four before her before turning back to Bree, Robbie, and Raven.

"I told you that I was bringing in four other blood witches to help us strip Morgan of her powers." She motioned each one as she gave their name. "This is Wilson, Alessandra, Sophie, and Carter. They belong to a coven in Albany called Stringbell." Her voice lowered slightly. "They just lost one of their members last week."

"How?" Robbie asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Sophie asked quietly.

No one spoke for a long time. I bit my lip to keep the lump rising in my throat from exploding into a sob. I couldn't bear to be watching this, and it was made all the worse by knowing that I wasn't allowed to leave. I was going to have to see what this world wanted me to see before I was allowed to return.

"When are we going to do it?" Carter asked after a moment, looking determined but also a little scared. Sky didn't say anything for a moment.

"Now. Tonight. We were waiting for you to get here, and now that you are …" She trailed off as an uncomfortable silence fell over the crowd assembled in that cold, dreary basement. Until everyone fell silent, I hadn't been aware of just how loud my breathing was, and it suddenly became much harder to retain a hold of calmness on myself. This was getting to be too much.

"Now?" Alessandra asked, a slight hitch in her soft, lyrical voice.

"Unfortunately," Sky said quietly. I noticed how quiet Bree and the others had become. Just staring down at the ground.

Seeing as I, too, was staring at the ground for most of the following exchange, it would be quite a miracle if I managed to understand what the plan was. I was too lost in my own thoughts, my own fears, my own guilt. It was only because Ciaran explained it to me later that I understood just what Sky and the others were planning for that night. Wilson, Alessandra, Sophie, and Carter had left already; Sky had sent them ahead to do a bit of recon and find out that Morgan … the other Morgan, I guess … was actually where I—she was supposed to be. I suspected that wasn't her real reason for sending the others out, though. She, Raven, Bree, and Robbie wanted time to say goodbye to each other. Just in case something went horribly wrong.

Ciaran and I trudged back up the stairs to the main level of the shop; I couldn't listen to my friends' goodbyes. I just couldn't. It would be too much to have to deal with, considering my brain already felt like it was ready to explode. I had a strange feeling that Ciaran already knew what was going to happen, though. He had been unusually silent in the twenty minutes or so that passed until the others came back up the stairs, all looking grimly resolute, and left the shop without a word to each other. I looked at my father anxiously, and he silently motioned towards the door. Taking a deep breath, I followed Sky, Bree, Robbie, and Raven out to the street.

_You'll fly away  
__But take my hand until that day  
__So when they ask how far love goes  
__When my job's done  
__You'll be the one who knows_

The building was ordinary enough on the outside. A gray warehouse with a huge worn sign above the door that read _A&M Consolidated Shipping. _I bit my lip, staring up at its huge dark form, silhouetted against the night sky. Something about the scene before me felt surreal somehow; a foreboding feeling was beginning to spread through me, and I couldn't help but feel that something was amiss.

"Why exactly are we here again?" Bree whispered as she and the others approached the south entrance, Ciaran and I trailing silently behind them.

"I got a tip that Morgan was supposed to be here tonight," Sky murmured as she looked towards the second floor of the warehouse at a dirty, grimy window. "Shipping records from New York City indicate that a package from Cairo should be arriving here tonight. Antiquities from Luxor with immense magickal power."

"Egyptian mystical type things?" Robbie asked.

"Pretty much," Sky said. "Wilson made it clear that the artifacts were very powerful."

"How powerful?" Raven asked, looking worried.

"Powerful enough for us to want to make sure that Morgan doesn't get hold of them," Sky said, peering around the corner of the building before walking around it. "Come on. The others should be around here somewhere." After a moment, though, she paused and a very suspicious look crossed her face, followed by one of worry. "Oh, no …"

"What?" Bree demanded.

"I just have this feeling," Sky said under her breath. "That something is wrong here. Very wrong."

"Where's Morgan?" Robbie asked, following her around the corner and stopping dead in his tracks. "Oh …"

As Ciaran and I came into view of what they were looking at, my eyes widened in surprise. The huge double doors of the warehouse were wide open and light from inside spilled over the dirt road surrounding the building. Sky was staring towards the doors with an unreadable expression on her face.

"What is it?" Bree whispered. "Where are Wilson and the others?"

"I think … I think they're in there," Sky said, her voice breaking. "That means that …" She broke off, unable to speak.

"Morgan got to them already," Robbie finished for her, his voice growing fainter with each word.

I gasped slightly as I heard a voice ring out from inside the warehouse, a hauntingly familiar voice that I heard every time I opened my own mouth. "I know you're out there, you know."

Sky looked at the others before taking a deep breath and walking into the warehouse. Robbie, Bree, and Raven shared an uncomfortable look and followed her. Unbeknownst to them, Ciaran and I slipped inside as well. When I saw what was before me, I let out a cry that went unheard by those around me.

_All the things you treasure most  
__Will be the hardest won  
__I will watch you struggle long  
__Until the answers come_

Four bodies were suspended from a black railing that wrapped around the second floor of the warehouse, bloodied, bruised, and battered. The slightly swaying forms of Wilson, Sophie, Rachael, and Carter stared down at us from glassy, dead eyes, their necks twisted at gruesome angles, a horrible testament to the deaths they had just fallen victim to. A figure was standing with her arms spread out along the railing, a saccharine smile playing across her lips. My lips.

"Took you long enough," Morgan Rowlands said in a drawling voice that chilled me to the core; I had never spoken with that tone before in my life. "I was starting to wonder if I'd have to cut these guys down and personally deliver them to you."

Sky was staring at me … her … with a new expression on her face. A stunned realization. And that was when it hit me. Looking back and forth between Sky and myself—an odd sentence, true, but it's what I was doing—made me realize that there were two ways this night could end. And both of them involved a hell of a lot of bloodshed.

"Why?" Sky murmured, her gaze flicking back and forth between Morgan and the four corpses hung from the railing.

"Why, what?" Morgan asked nonchalantly. "Why did I kill them?" She scoffed. "I'd think that would be fairly obvious. They were coming to strip me of my powers. Why would I let them just get away with that?" Her thin mouth curled into a sneer. "And now you have to kill me."

Sky didn't say anything.

"I can tell what you're thinking," Morgan continued, walking slowly towards the wrought iron stairs curling down to the ground level of the warehouse. "You're thinking that you have to kill me to stop this. But you don't think you're going to get me, do you?" Her taunts were still met with silence from Sky. "You're not going to kill me. You _can't _kill me. Not Sky Eventide. Not the perfect witch with the perfect record who's never abused magick in her entire life." A pause, and her daunting tone disappeared as a disgusted look crossed her face. "You're not capable."

Finally Sky's gaze met Morgan's. Two pairs of dark eyes stared into each other with a kind of intensity I had never seen before.

"You're underestimating me," Sky murmured quietly. "Always was one of your weaknesses."

Morgan scowled. "What gives you the right to pass judgment on me?" A rather ugly look crossed her face. "Do you think you're better than me?"

Sky's answer was delightfully simple, yet cutting enough to stun the girl in front of her. "I am."

For a moment, all that my alter-ego could do was stare at the blonde in front of her as she began to descend the staircase. "Excuse me?" she finally asked, her voice sounding deadly quiet all of a sudden.

"Just take a look at yourself, Morgan," Sky whispered. "Look at what you've become. You're barely even human anymore. Just bitter and evil." The look on Morgan's face as she reached the bottom of the stairs was one of utter annoyance. "Mike wouldn't have wanted this for you."

"You don't know what he wanted," Morgan growled.

"I know that he didn't give his life so that you could become addicted to dark magick and kill innocent people," Sky said, her voice rising. "We knew going into that cemetery that some of us wouldn't be coming out alive. It was a risk we were willing to take to save you. Mike knew that, too." Her voice lowered, but the fury evident in her voice kept becoming more obvious. "If you don't stop this, his death didn't mean anything. Anything at all."

"I don't think I want to talk about this anymore," Morgan whispered, a steely edge to her tone that made me involuntarily shiver. Then, though, a small grin appeared on her face. "Let's talk about something else." As she approached Sky, stopping mere inches in front of her, Sky held her ground, expressionless.

"You know, I'm not totally blind to what's been going on in there," Morgan said, motioning Sky's head. "I understand you more than any of them do, you know." She cast Raven, Bree, and Robbie a contemptuous glare.

"Understand?" Sky asked, her voice shaking with barely-masked rage. "_Understand_? You don't have a f—"

Bree looked at Raven and Robbie, her eyes wide. That was the first time that any of them had heard Sky use such a strong expletive.

"Have you ever woken up in hospital room alone?" she screamed. "Not knowing what day it is? Not knowing where someone, _anyone_, is, with your last memory being crashing into a headstone?"

"No," Morgan said simply. "Can't say that I have."

"You don't _understand_. You can't. I looked at the clock in my room. The date counter said 2007." Her voice lowered to a barely audible growl. "You put me in a coma for three years."

"And yet, somehow, I was hoping we could be friends again," Morgan said, smiling sweetly. "What do you say?"

Sky looked at her for a moment before laughing in a tired sort of way. "You're trying to make me angry."

"Well, it's never been especially hard," Morgan said with a chuckle. "You've always had the temper of a walrus." Sky raised her eyebrows. Morgan looked a little uncomfortable. "Or, um … something equally temperamental."

Raven finally spoke, her voice drawing the rest of us out of the reverie we had been in, staring at Sky and Morgan so intensely. Now our eyes focused on her. "You were sorry when you did it," she whispered. "You were sorry. What changed?"

I turned my eyes back to my alter-ego. I was actually wondering the same thing myself. What sort of an answer was I going to give?

"Everything," Morgan said. "Things just became … clearer. I knew what I had to do."

"What, kill everyone?" Bree demanded, her voice tight.

"It's more the principle than the method," Morgan said thoughtfully. I slowly released a breath, not even realizing that I had been holding it, still staring towards the girl who looked so much like me but was so different. "It's more about erasing than killing. I mean, this?" She motioned towards the bodies above her. "This is rare. Normally, there's not this much show, but …" She shrugged. "What can I say? I wanted this to be special for you guys."

Bree had pursed her lips in disgust, and I could tell that it was taking all of her willpower to not burst out with probably a very rude statement. "No show, huh? Because I seem to recall seeing you kill a man on the sidewalk when he accidentally bumped into you."

Morgan shrugged. "I was carrying shopping bags and my new skirt fell into the mud. Excuse me for getting a little ticked off at the guy. I mean, he didn't even apologize!" She looked at Sky, who was resolutely staring anywhere but at her. "Well, come on, Sky! What did you honestly expect? You'd feed me the heroic, inspiring speech and I'd collapse in tears and come back with you guys and we'd all just pretend that nothing ever happened? This is kind of what I was talking about. The erasing people thing?"

"It's not as if it'll help," Sky whispered. "You kill us, and then what does that accomplish? Where do you go? What do you do? What's the point to anything you've done in the last few years?"

"The point is that I don't have to be burdened by you anymore," Morgan whispered coldly. "People are such baggage. They just mess everything up. Them and their stupid emotions. That's what's pointless."

"You're a coward," Sky said through her teeth. "You're just doing this so you don't have to feel anymore. Never mind how many people get hurt, is that it? As long as you're not hurting anymore, the end justifies the means."

"Only way to go," Morgan said nonchalantly. "And … I guess that's why I can't let you leave this warehouse alive." She actually sounded a little apologetic. "Sorry. But, then … you almost died in a warehouse, didn't you? All those years ago in England? Now you actually get to finish what you started."

Sky didn't say anything, just looked at Morgan with an odd look in her eyes. It seemed like quiet resignation. Morgan sighed in annoyance.

"You're going to ask me about Hunter, aren't you?" She sighed and folded her arms. "I thought we'd canvassed that topic pretty completely, but if you still have more questions …"

"How could you kill him?" Sky whispered, her gaze focused on the ground. "In cold blood …"

"Don't ask me how," Morgan snarled. "He was begging for it." Her lips curled into a sneer. "Just like you'll be in a minute." She looked down at her hand. "Recognize this?" Dark witch fire. What had put her into the coma in the first place. "I learned how to control it a long time ago. And it wants you."

Even though I had been trying not to blink in an effort not to miss anything in the last five minutes, I wasn't quite sure who had launched the first attack. The fighting had commenced, the tension that had been building for months finally exploding into magickal and physical attacks. The real fighting that I had never seen before. Sky and my alter-ego—my Doppelganger, if I may—were fighting with everything that each of them had, controlled spells and raw, unleashed power. Magick was virtually erupting in front of my eyes, and all I could see were bursts of light and dark. To the common observer, both witches seemed equally matched, but I felt my heart sink when a particularly powerful blast of dark energy from the older me threw Sky against the railing of the second story balcony. She fell to the ground with a sharp gasp of pain, and I vaguely felt Ciaran pull me back behind a huge pile of boxes as Morgan advanced on her, pushing back the others, who had rushed forward, with a simple, "Get back." As an invisible force pulled Bree, Robbie, and Raven back against the wall, helpless, she stood triumphantly over Sky, like a lioness proudly surveying her kill.

"Sad, Eventide," she said, unable to hide the growing grin on her face. "I really expected more from you." She paused thoughtfully. "But at least you put up more of a fight than Hunter did. I mean, he struggled a bit, but …" Her grin grew evil. "It was over too soon for him to do much else."

_But I won't make it harder  
__I'll be there to cheer you on  
__I'll shine the light that guides you down  
__The road you're walking on_

I knew what was going to happen in the split millisecond before it actually happened. I could have predicted it even without scrying or divination. If there was one thing my older self could do to tick Sky off, it would be to mention the cruel way that she murdered Hunter. I knew. If I were in Sky's position, I would have done the same thing. She was back up again, this time fighting Morgan with a fury that I had never seen in a human being. I watched her land blow after blow and her spells hit their targets more and more as Morgan, unprepared for this sudden wave of rage, faltered back and was forced to succumb to her former covenmate's blows. Time seemed to be moving more slowly suddenly; I shivered as the lights of the magick ignited around me, the bright spectrum filling my eyes and penetrating my soul.

Suddenly I slammed back to the earth, though, and I stared at what was in front of me. Morgan was locked in a semi-headlock, and I could sense Sky strengthening her grip with binding spells as quickly as she could. Morgan was struggling, but she could not break free; I watched in silence, staring as if I were watching an extremely interesting television show that I simply couldn't break free of.

I watched in a stunned hush as Sky reached into and pulled something out of her jacket pocket. With a flash of silver, I recognized what it was. Its image had haunted my mind for days now.

It was Mike's athame. Even in the dim light of the warehouse in the middle of the night, its double blade glinted with a radiance and power that seemed out of place on this dark night.

Morgan's eyes widened as well, staring at the athame with a choked gasp. Then her eyes narrowed. "That's mine."

"Not anymore," Sky murmured.

Morgan gave a laugh, but she was now looking a little bit scared. "So, what? Are you going to kill me?"

Sky's voice was soft. "It didn't have to be this way." After a pause in which she seemed to be contemplating the very existence of magick itself, she said in a choked voice, "Goddess, forgive me."

Despite my best attempt to stifle myself, I couldn't help the small scream that erupted in my throat when I saw Mike's athame drive home, embedded in the stomach of the girl struggling on the warehouse floor. I wasn't the only one. Bree, who I suspected had been on the verge of tears for most of the encounter, let out a cry between a sob and a harsh gasp, and Robbie looked sick as tears filled his eyes.

Morgan was gasping as she cried out in agony once—only once. She clutched the hilt of the dagger as blood spilled out of the wound and onto her hands, bright red against her pale skin. Her eyes were popping out of her sockets as the pain erupted within her; I could almost feel it myself. Blood was now covering her hands, and her gasps for breath were becoming longer and deeper.

"I can't … I can't believe you did it," she breathed, panting heavily. She grinned weakly. "You actually did it. It's … kind of hard to believe …" She released her death grip on the hilt of the athame and stared down at the wound, still pumping blood down her clothes and onto the floor. She swayed slightly, her hand hovering over the wound.

"You can't heal yourself," Sky whispered. "The wound is too deep." After a pause, she spoke again, her voice shaking slightly. "You're going to die."

Intermingled between her increasingly gasping breaths, Morgan chuckled slightly. I could see her legs beginning to shake, struggling to hold her body up as she lost so much blood. "I'm not … trying … to heal myself." Her gaze hardened. "I'm just trying to deliver … one final message to that thick skull of yours and hope it won't bounce off." Her voice had weakened to barely more than a whisper.

After a long moment in which she could only stare at the girl who was once her friend, Sky took the bait. "And that would be?"

Through gritted teeth, Morgan whispered what I could tell were her last words. "Evil never goes out without a bang."

As she fell to the ground, I could have sworn I heard her whisper something underneath her breath. As if the world were suddenly moving in slow motion, I realized what she had done. The second floor balcony, nothing more than metal wire, and its railing were creaking, the metal groaning with the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. As the body of the Woodbane prodigy, easily the strongest witch the magickal world had ever seen grow, hit the cold cement floor of that lonely warehouse, the railing and entire balcony collapsed in an earsplitting crash. Before I could even react, before I could even process what I had seen, the balcony had crashed on top of my friends. As the dust swirled in the air from the concrete that had shattered, all was silent from Bree, Robbie, and Raven.

As everything started to go black, darkness closing in around the corners of my field of vision, I saw Sky's wide-eyed look of pure horror and heard a last whispered mutter from myself.

"Quite a bang …"

And one last, choked out sentence, echoing from the collapsed balcony. "Sky … oh, my God, Sky, I think they're dead …"

All I knew then was that I was shaking violently, screaming and cursing, sobbing and choking on my own tears. I couldn't see anymore, and darkness was engulfing me. I was suddenly aware of another presence around me; I could feel its eyes watching me, and a sinking feeling within me recognized it. It was a presence I had felt many times, been around many times; I would know it anywhere. It was Hunter. And I knew he had seen it all.

_You'll fly away  
__But take my hand until that day  
__So when they ask how far love goes  
__When my job's done  
__You'll be the one who knows_

**Bree**

When Alisa, Robbie, and I walked back into Sky's room during lunch break that day, it was to find the room empty except for, of course, Sky's still body lying on the bed, the machines hooked up to her beeping steadily. About thirty seconds after we had walked inside, though, the door opened and Raven stepped inside, carrying a McDonald's bag from the café near the lobby. She looked surprised to see us.

"Oh, hey," she said. "I didn't know you guys were coming back."

Alisa smiled at her reassuringly. "What, like we'd leave you here alone? It's lunchtime and I've got study hall next period, so I'll stay even if the others can't."

Raven didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. I could see the gratitude in her eyes, and so could Alisa. "Has there been any change?" I asked.

Raven shook her head with a sigh. "Not really."

"Where's Hunter?" Alisa asked curiously, aware of his notable absence.

Raven shrugged. "I don't know. He got this really weird look on his face a while ago and said that he had to go find Morgan."

"Oh," I said. "I took her home a few hours ago. I don't know where she disappeared to after that."

I couldn't help but be slightly worried as the rest of us pulled up chairs around the bed, the others talking quietly. Where _had _Morgan gone? She had been acting so strangely lately, pretty much ever since we got back this summer, but in the last week I had honestly had no idea where her mind was or anything that she was thinking. We used to tell each other everything, and it hurt that there were obviously things that she felt she couldn't tell me.

I had been so lost in my personal musings that I had completely zoned out of the hospital room. I was only brought back to it when I heard Alisa give a shriek and felt Robbie jump up out of his chair next to me. They were leaning over Sky's bed, staring at her as though she were a very fascinating museum exhibit.

"Are you for real?" Alisa demanded, looking excitedly at Raven. "Did you really feel that?"

Raven nodded, her eyes wide. "Yes, I swear, I felt her squeeze my hand. Sky?"

I looked at Sky curiously. Her eyes were still closed, but with a semi-hesitant sense of sudden elation, I realized that some color had returned to her cheeks.

"Sky?" Alisa said, leaning closer and raising her voice a little. "Sky, can you hear us?"

"I'm going to go get a doctor," Robbie said, hustling around the chair and dashing out of the room. "Hey, hello? We need a doctor in here! We think she's waking up!"

"Sky?" Raven whispered, watching Sky closely. "Baby, can you hear me?"

I held my breath and exhaled sharply as Sky's eyes fluttered open slowly. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision; her head was turned towards Alisa and I, and she looked at us in confusion. I'm sure we were quite a sight; Alisa had a huge smile on her face, and my expression was one of mixed joyfulness and shock. Without saying anything, she turned her head slowly to see Raven.

It was the first time in my life that I'd ever seen Raven completely speechless.

Sky reached her hand up to brush away a tear that escaped from Raven's dark eyes and smiled gently at her. "It's okay," she whispered, her voice weak. She smiled softly, and Raven's eyes widened as Alisa and I looked on in silence. "I saw Morgan … and I think she's going to be fine. We're all going to be fine."

"Are you sure?" Raven asked with a slight hitch to her voice.

"They were wrong …" Sky murmured. "They said there was nothing that could change her fate. They said it would have to be something monumental … that such a thing doesn't exist." The corners of her lips turned into a smile. "But it does."

_Before the mountains call to you  
__Before you leave this home  
__I want to teach your heart to trust  
__As I will teach my own_

**Morgan**

When the spinning and dizziness had stopped and the flashing lights around my eyes had ceased in their attempts to permanently blind me, I realized just where I was. I was sitting in my room in Widow's Vale, New York, and morning sun was shining cheerfully through my curtains. My room felt warm and humid, but I was drenched in a cold sweat. My eyes were pointed at the floor, and I noticed that all of the candles in the circle around me had gone out.

And there was Hunter, sitting in front of me just outside the circle of candles, watching me with a concerned expression on his face. As he reached out his hand to touch my arm, I jerked it away violently, feeling my body beginning to shake uncontrollably. I was nearly hyperventilating, but I couldn't stop myself; my mind was spinning at such a rate as to give one a massive headache, my body physically ached all over as if I were the one that the balcony had fallen on, and my heart felt so heavy with guilt that it was as if I were carrying a miniature anvil within my chest cavity.

His green eyes were wide with concern, surprise, and a mix of other things that I'd wager had something to do with everything we had just seen when I was scrying. Wait … we? Suddenly I was feeling a whole new emotion: anger.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, struggling to my feet, my legs shaking. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Morgan –" he began, but I interrupted.

"I was scrying!" I yelled, my voice getting louder with each word. "What gives you the right to just intrude on me like that? What you see when you're scrying is supposed to be _private_!" It was getting harder to breathe, and I felt like my lungs were exploding in my chest. "_What are you doing here_?"

"Morgan, I'm sorry, I –" He was trying to talk, but I wasn't hearing him. I was trying as hard as I could to keep from sobbing, and I was losing the battle pathetically. The lump rising in my throat was getting harder and harder to ignore making talking immensely difficult.

"You weren't supposed to see that," I choked out, the battle finally lost. Tears pent up for weeks began pouring out of my eyes, and I didn't try to stop them. This kind of pain was too much. I collapsed to my knees on the floor, the sounds of my own sobs not even able to penetrate my mind. I couldn't think; there was only feeling. Only this pain. And then the feeling of Hunter's arms around me, pulling me to him, whispering in my ear. I clung to him tightly, as if my life depended on him, my soul breaking as rivers of tears were finally released.

"Shh," he whispered, stroking my hair. "It's okay, it's going to be okay …"

"No, it's not!" I wailed. "You saw what I did! How can that ever be okay?" I felt something break inside me. "Hunter … I killed them all." His eyes widened, and I knew that he knew I was talking about the Diobhail. "I killed them all and I enjoyed it." I raised my voice to a yell, desperate to release some of this guilt somehow, some way. "I enjoyed it! It felt so good to see them all die!" My voice trailed off, and I retreated to a broken whisper. "It wasn't like with Selene and Cal. I didn't feel like I wanted to go back then, but now I do." I sniffled loudly and took a deep breath, trying to calm the heaving of my chest. "I want to go back because it's calling me. It's calling me … the magick … it's calling me and it wants me back. It says if I go back it won't hurt. It says if I go back it won't hurt anymore."

Hunter didn't say anything for such a long time I vaguely wondered if he had been frozen in time. He was just staring, staring into my watery eyes. After an infinite pause, he spoke shakily. "But … you don't want to go back, do you?"

"I …" Goddess, how could I answer something like that? "I don't know. I … I can't live like this, Hunter. This hurts too much and I just—I don't have the emotional capacity to deal with this here! I'm just … me. I can't do this!" I retreated into my own mind for a while, just concentrating on being able to breathe. The one thing I could do right. When I looked at Hunter, he was still just watching me, concern in his vivid green eyes.

"Will it ever go away?" I whispered tearfully.

He looked down, thinking, trying to formulate an answer that wouldn't make me burst into tears again. "Not … not completely." He looked at me, and I recognized the familiar pain in his eyes. "I still feel Linden's death every day. I know that Sky does, too. It's never going to go away completely, but … it'll dim after a while." His voice constricted. "The pain will dull. It's not always going to hurt this much."

"Maybe I want it to," I whispered. "Maybe if it doesn't hurt this much, it means he's really …"

"I know," Hunter whispered. "I know."

"I don't understand!" I cried, fresh tears erupting, anger lacing my words. "I don't understand why it had to be him! Why couldn't it have been me? Why did he have to be the one to … to die?"

"I can't answer that, Morgan," he murmured. "You know I can't. I can't pretend to have that kind of knowledge."

"And who's next?" I continued, my voice strengthening. "Bree? Robbie? My family? You? Who's going to be the next person I love to die? Who's going to be the next person I don't have a chance to say goodbye to?" I sniffled. "I had just found a reason, Hunter. A reason to practice good magick and believe that just because Ciaran is my father doesn't mean I have to be evil. He showed me that. And now …"

"Morgan, haven't you ever wondered why we were pulled together?" Hunter asked quickly, staring intensely into my eyes. "Not just you and me, but all of Kithic? Haven't you ever wondered why we all happened to be in the same place at the same time? In the Wiccan world, there are no such things as coincidences … we've proven that. We were brought together because we have the power to do amazing things, we have the power to be the strongest witches on earth. But … we need to believe it first." His gaze was making me shiver. "Mike knew this. Just because Mike is gone, Morgan, doesn't mean that what he stood for is gone. The love that he felt for you and that you felt for him isn't gone. It's locked away inside you; you just have to find it. Just because he died doesn't mean that everything he told you wasn't true."

I was remembering a cold, dreary day after returning from New York. I had broken up with Hunter because I was afraid; I had just found out that Ciaran MacEwan was my father, and I wanted to protect him from what I assumed was unconquerable evil within me. He had called out to me as I walked away, biting tears down. "We make our own choices."

"We make our own choices," I whispered, remembering with a pang that Mike, too, had shared this bit of knowledge with me. It was so simple, and yet …

"It's true," Hunter murmured, his hand stroking the side of my face. "Morgan, I have Woodbane blood, too, remember? I've had experience with dark magick before. Most witches have, in some form or another. But we choose to practice good magick because … can you honestly say that dark magick is better?"

As I stared into his green eyes, feeling that they were piercing my very soul, I gave a soft chuckle. It had taken me weeks, months, ages to realize what I had right in front of me. In that moment, the choice was so clear that I wanted to laugh out loud with its simplicity.

"No," I said, daring to allow a ray of happiness to escape into my voice. "No." Hunter's smile matched my own, and I felt the huge hole within me beginning to close itself up. Light was spreading through me, and I smiled broadly as I pulled Hunter close to me. The realization was blinding me. "Nothing is better than this."

As his lips met mine I felt all of the tension that had been surrounding us for weeks exploding around us, the pain and anger transformed to passion as I fell against him, desperate to get as close to him as I possibly could. I felt his arms wrapping around me, pulling me closer, as our mouths met again and again. This felt so familiar, and I was overcome by such a sense of joy at finally feeling Hunter in my arms again that I wanted to burst out cheering. As a lack of oxygen ensured that we would have to separate, we remained only a few inches apart. I smiled broadly, trying to control my breathing, as Hunter caressed my face, equally speechless but smiling just as much. I wanted to say so much to him in that moment, to tell him everything that was on my mind in those few seconds. I wanted him to know that he had rescued me, that I never wanted to be apart from him again, that he could never get rid of me even if he tried.

"Nothing is better than this."

_You'll fly away  
__But take my hand until that day  
__So when they ask how far love goes  
__When my job's done  
__You'll be the one who knows_

**THE END**


End file.
